[lbo-talk] Green Capitalism not in libraries!

[Bill Quimby]

I assume that you are talking about a public library? If so the rotten attitude may
be because you are a serious reader. Most public libraries (I'm speaking in
generalities, of course - there may be some that
are super) have a difficult time with "serious" readers. First - if they
are not in some some of consortium than any books that you request through
Interlibrary Loan cost them lots of money in staff time and fees - $5 to $10
per request. They'll frown if you request that they buy something "serious"
because they know that you may be the only person to read it. (R must have
charmed  someone!) And attitude? - almost all pub libs depend solely on public
money and so are now suffering from very large budget cuts and layoffs.

One hope for the future is what's happening in Ohio - the statewide university
sharing consortium now includes a few large public libraries, and there are 
talks on
expanding to some degree of connectivity with all publics in the state.

Incidentally I checked WorldCat (a listing of the holdings of 71,000 libraries
world-wide, holding over 1.5 billion books - it's www.worldcat.org if
anybody wants to use it.) and that librarian was right! Three libraries
have it - two in Australia and one in Minnesota!. That's very strange,
especially since this database includes academic libraries as well. One of the
book review sources that libraries depend on for acquisition advice may have
really panned it, if they covered it at all.

- Bill

shag carpet bomb wrote:
> 
> I went to order this last night, alas:
> 
> 
>> Dear Ms Shag,
>> We have received your request for Green Capitalism: Manufacturing 
>> scarcity in an age of abundance by James Heartfield   Unfortunately, 
>> this item cannot be located in any libraries.
> 
> 
> Take heart though, James. R wanted some obscure book -- I mean totally 
> obscure -- and he requested the library purchase it. They did!
> 
> Meanwhile, I think our librarians in this town are really horrible. I 
> have never seen anything like it. They act like they are annoyed when 
> you check books out. When we go, we typically check out a dozen or more 
> books. Sometimes a couple of dozen. Generally, we do read them all. But 
> these librarians act like it's a sin to check out books, let alone that 
> many books. Verah verah irritatin'. and I can say that I have 
> experienced many different library system, in cities, small towns, and 
> rurual area, state colleges and private. I've never encountered such 
> crappy attitudes.
> 
> If I didn't love librarians most of the time, and sympathize with anyone 
> who does customer service, I would probably start a blog dedicated to 
> how crappy the front desk library personnel are here.
> 
> they are even shitty when I try to donate money or buy something from 
> their fundraiser!
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