Libraries

The Velcro City Tourist Board wants to know your thoughts on libraries:

Over the last week we’ve been doing a survey of library users – I’ll leave my thoughts on the methodology employed to the side, as I’m not a sociologist (or indeed a ‘proper’ librarian). The survey is designed to uncover people’s ’satisfaction levels’ with the service we provide. Which is all well and good, but it strikes me as intrinsically limited in that it only covers people who actually come into the building.

I assume that most regular visitors to VCTB are regular readers of books, of whatever type. What I want to find out is what people who are passionate about books (to the extent that they read websites about books) think of the modern library service, as they have experienced it. So I’d like to ask you all a few questions:

And here are my answers.

Do you use your local library, or any national libraries (eg British Library)?

I barely use my town library. I occasionally still use Oxford’s libraries.

If you do use libraries, how often and what for? What do you feel would make your local library even better than it already is, as far as fulfilling your own personal needs is concerned?

I use libraries for reference, rather than for fiction. I have used my town library to look up local history, when researching holidays, and for other similar matters. What I would like to have access to a library for is more specialised material: scientific journals (both work-related and non-work-related), american and other non-British sf, and non-fiction about sf. None of which are particularly well-served by my local library. On the other hand, I don’t think my local library necessarily should be trying to serve those needs, because I’m probably the only person in town that has them.

If you don’t use libraries, why not? (Don’t be afraid to be seriously critical here, I want to know the truth – do the buildings suck, are the staff rubbish, do they never have what you want, do you prefer to buy your own books?)

I don’t use my local library either because it doesn’t have the material I’m interested in (scientific references, american sf) or because I don’t need to (pretty much any sf, which I can usually get for review if I put my mind to it), or because I don’t want to (most other fiction, including sf that I don’t review; I like owning books).

The staff have seemed friendly and capable whenever I’ve used my local library. The building itself doesn’t seem terribly friendly — it’s big and brown and seventies — although that may be a hangover from visiting it as a child, and being overawed by it.

What do you feel libraries represent? Or to put it another way: what is the prime function of a library, in your opinion?

To provide public access to as much information as possible as easily as possible. Libraries are good things.

What would you like to see change in the way library services are provided for you?

Online subscriptions to journals and the provision of cheap printing would be one way of providing me with access to the scientific materials I want, without making absurd demands on storage space, even more so if they could provide library members with some way to remotely log in; but I suspect it would still be prohibitively expensive. For reasons noted above, though, I’m probably not typical of users of my local library.

Now it’s everyone else’s turn. If you’re going to take it as a meme for your own blog (and please do!), please remember to also email your responses to info[at]velcro-city.co.uk.