A Little Library

During the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, all public libraries were closed and that was a serious issue for reading addicts... like me. Luckily, I had several unread books on my bookshelves and managed to weather the worst of the storm. I did cave in May and bought some e-book novels... old favourites that I know I will re-read over and over again.

But the thing is... I completely forgot about our community Little Libraries. An idea first developed in the 1990s in Germany, community libraries have taken off in North America. In Canada, for example, there is some variation of little libraries, lending libraries and/or book exchanges in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, Kamloops, Prince George, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg... and many smaller communities!

The idea is quite simple... build a weatherproof bookcase and then stock it with some books. I came across a site which had all sorts of ideas for repurposing different items and converting them into a bookcase/book shelter: mailboxes, microwaves, bar fridges, and old newspaper vending machines (brilliant!).

Community members can come and borrow a book (no fees, no sign-out) and then return that book when they've finished, or place a new book in the Little Library. It works. And it's immensely popular. Not to mention, it has some serious benefits:

• Develop community and pride in community especially if a group of people are involved;
• Bring us closer together as many of us become more isolated through technology;
• Encourage us to walk around the neighbourhood which in turn promotes health and even safety;
• Most importantly they promote literacy and the love of reading and books.

What's not to like about community libraries? Absolutely nothing... they are a win-win-win initiative and my only regret is that we don't have one in our neighbourhood. The Little Libraries website for Nanaimo has an email address to which one can write and request a Little Library... and... I wonder... It would be a Small Step to building some community spirit if we were to host one... Are there any downsides?

Little Library arson victim

Well... a few of the Little Libraries were arson victims... and this is not unique to our community. Community lending libraries and/or book exchanges in Vancouver have also been vandalized in recent years. But... is that any reason not to host one?

It seems, however, that one organization, Little Free Libraries, is creating quite a stir. A librarian in Toronto wrote a critique of the non-profit organization in the Journal of Radical Librarianship. Huh... she has a few bones to pick with that specific organization... not the book exchanges themselves. OK, well that's good to know. Although the librarian did note that the selection in most little libraries is quite pathetic... like Dummies Guide to Windows 2000.

Huh... maybe I should do some research and scope out a few little libraries in our community and see what is actually on the shelves. Although... I guess it's like anything... they need maintenance and someone to pull out the Windows 2000 books... On the other hand, the Vancouver Island Regional Library is a sponsor of our Little Libraries... so it can't be all bad.

We'll see how it shakes out. I've taken one Small Step and sent an email to our local Little Libraries and asked if they are building any during the time of Covid-19... stay tuned for updates...

The Cost of a Library Card

Have you ever looked at your property taxes? We just got our statement and I wanted to have a closer look at some of the items. There was one entry that jumped out at me... how much money goes to our local library...

That's it... $91.38 a year goes to our local library. Which seems a ridiculously tiny amount of money for the benefits it can give. And... that number is for our entire household! So, really, per person (in our two person household), it's $45.69/person...

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog post about my love affair with books and I included a picture which speaks volumes...

In 2018, the average value of a library card was $661. That means that of the citizens who have a library card, the average person got $661 of value out of their library card... I had a look at our 2018 Property Tax statement and that year... we paid $78 towards the library. Crazy!

Sooo... in 2018, we paid $39/person for the library and got $661 in value... that's a pretty sweet deal. It's like a 94% discount or a 1695% bonus... who would not want to take advantage of that??

I couldn't find stats for our library system but... in Canada as a whole, about 60% of Canadians have a library card. Only 40% of Canadians, however, are active library borrowers. So... that means 60% of Canadians are paying for the library system but not using it. I was one of those people for many years - it was just easier to buy books. And too much of a hassle to order the books via the library and then remember to return them... But, I have become a library convert...

Although, our household does seem to follow the stats, more or less... I have a library card but my partner does not. Although... any books she requests, I order on my card, which works out well.

Right now, with the virus circulating, I obviously haven't been able to access the library, which has been closed. At least not for physical books... but e-books are still available... and a variety of databases. And... our library just posted a notice that we can now use the Ancestry Library Edition (genealogy research) which is super cool!

I miss the library and I'm going to guess that the 2020 value of a library card is going to be a bit less this year but still... it's good for the environment and good for my budget...

Books, Books and More Books

I love books. I'm not going to call myself an addict but... I really, really love books.

My love affair with books started when I was a kid. For the longest time, I kept one of my favourites... I am a Bunny by Ole Risom with illustrations by Richard Scarry.

It was quite tattered and apparently 3-year-old-me thought Nicholas the Bunny needed glasses because on each page, I drew a set of glasses on him. Not sure why... since no one in my family wore glasses, least of all me! But there you go... don't give a kid a book and a pen...

When I entered grade school, I was introduced to the wonderful world of Scholastic Book Services.

Favourite horse stories

Oh my goodness... the flyers and order forms would get handed out at school in the fall and spring and I would peruse all the offerings and make my selections - usually animal stories... particularly horse stories. I still have three of my favourites: Old Bones: the Wonder Horse, Blitz and Blanco: The Legend of the White Stallion.

But Scholastic Book Services cost money and so my Mom introduced me to the public library. Whoa... soooo many books! At the time, our public library had a super cool kids section. It was a big room that was almost two stories high. A set of stairs led to an upper level which was a balcony that ran around three sides of the room. There were books up top and... the area underneath the balcony was made of up of several shallow cave-like chambers. The ceiling was so low that adults had to duck down to get into each chamber. There were book shelves on three sides of each chamber and... it was the coolest thing ever for a kid... an Aladdin's cave of undiscovered treasure.

I would usually totter out of the library with a massive stack of books and gobble them up over the next week or two. Loved the library.

At the same time... I was a relatively easy kid when it came to Christmas and birthdays... just buy me books: Hardy Boys, Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, anything by Rutherford Montgomery, The Black Stallion...

Library card catalogue - how times have changed

As I moved through the education system, I dabbled in the school libraries... also good, but not as memorable... and then came university.

I loved the twisting rabbit-warrens of UBC's Main Library stacks but the university library didn't really stock a lot of fiction (unless it was 100+ years old!).

While attending UBC, I never got connected with the the Vancouver Public Library system. I think I went there once and requested a library card. Turns out that people living in UBC dorms were not considered Vancouver tax-payers sooo... no pay taxes, no get library card.

It became a bit of a moot point because I started earning some money and was able to feed my book appetite. Science fiction... westerns... mysteries... history novels... I acquired my own library at home.

The only problem was... I moved a lot... on average once every year... and after a while, packing up all those books became a chore. Not to mention I was running out of bookshelf space. And so I'd regularly declutter my books. I don't have my Cadfael books anymore. Nor my Dick Francis, Sharpe, Ramage, Pern, Star Trek, Stainless Steel Rat, Anne Perry or Louis L'Amour books. I still bought and read a lot of books... I just didn't keep them for very long. Kind of... errr... disposable convenience... ***cough*** (The irony of this is not lost on me...).

After a while, my book-buying habit became a bit expensive. Books aren't exactly cheap... a novel nowadays costs around $20. I used to travel a lot and passing through an airport was dangerous for me. I'd wander through the Virgin or Relay bookstores behind security and easily see a dozen books that looked super interesting. Even though I had at least two or three books with me, I would usually end up buying another one or two.

Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten about libraries... but not really. I completed online applications for a library card in Prince George and, later, in Calgary... but I never set foot in the actual buildings and definitely never borrowed a book. I had gotten out of the library habit and established a book-buying habit. Which was fine when I had enough disposable cash to satisfy my book cravings... but not so fine when we went on a year-long sabbatical and found ourselves on a budget.

One of MANY Bookie Monsters out there

My book-buying was cut off and I went into serious book-withdrawal. I became the Cookie Monster of books - The Bookie Monster. [Believe it or not... I thought I had come up with something new and cool with that little rhyme but... Bookie Monster is already a "thing"!]

I bought an e-book reader, figuring that e-books were easier to schlep around and less expensive but... honestly... reading an e-book is not the same as a real book. And e-books, even though they are cheaper than real books, are not exactly "cheap".

I discovered AbeBooks - an online bookstore where I could buy second-hand books from all over the world. Better, but still not great... not for someone with as voracious an appetite as myself.

During our sabbatical, we moved to the Island and... at that point... I rediscovered the public library. A whole new world opened up. I was amazed to discover that libraries have come a loonnnnggg way since the days of card catalogues and microfiche.

Everything is online... even inter-library loans... It's super-convenient and utterly magical. Our library system is even more magical because it's a regional library. We have three physical libraries in our city, but they are not the be all and end all. There are three dozen libraries in other communities that feed our regional library. That's a lot of books. And it's so easy... go online, search for the book I'm interested in and request it be delivered to my local branch. Bing. Done. The book gets delivered... sometimes within a few days... other times... a few months.

Cover - Atomic Habits
by James Clear

That's the only thing... getting books via the library requires patience. This is not going to feed the instant gratification monster within me. Because even though we have 36+ library branches... other people have discovered the library too and the hold lists can be long. Particularly if the book is new and hot.

For example, I put a hold on Atomic Habits (James Clear) a few weeks/months back. I had seen it in an airport bookstore and took a picture of the cover (my new habit) and then added it to my "To Read" list. When I got home, I requested it via the library. Except our library system "only" has 12 copies... and there are 119 holds... of which I am #37... sigh... Patience, Young Grasshopper, patience.

On the other hand, receiving an email from the library informing me that a book I've been waiting for is ready to be picked up... ooohhh... it's like Christmas!! I can't wait to scamper to the library and bring the book home and start reading.

I use the hold system with gusto... I currently have nine books on hold. The only thing is... sometimes a bunch of them come in at around the same time and I find myself dealing with an over-abundance of riches. I generally tend to have more than one book on the go at any one time but... even I can get overwhelmed by the pressure of reading four or five books in three weeks. I am learning to rein in my book ordering bug...

There is one more thing that I like about the library... I know that getting a book through the library means it's going to be a well-used book. It's going to be read by more than one set of eyes (mine). When I buy a book from the bookstore... I will often only read it once and then let it go by donating it to a thrift store. It might get read again... or maybe not. Thrift store bookshelves do NOT use the Dewey Decimal system... and trying to find a specific book is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack... with no guarantee that the needle you are seeking is even IN the haystack! Given how many books get donated to thrift stores... it's only understandable that at some point... books end up going to the landfill.

You see... books are incredibly hard to recycle due to the glue in the binding. Our city's recycling system accepts magazines, catalogues and phone books (ummm... glue in binding?) but not paperbacks or hardcovers. I know that some cities accept paperback books for recycling but not if they have ever gotten wet or if the paper has turned brown. This is a bit of a problem... and so I am trying to emphasize the Reduce and Reuse aspects of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

I still buy the occasional new physical book but only when I absolutely CANNOT wait for it and expect to use it long-term. I do buy e-books a bit more frequently and I still get some second-hand books via AbeBooks. If I'm going to buy books though, most of them come via thrift stores or garage sales. They are cheap and I don't feel bad about reading them and letting them go again, back into the pool of second-hand books from whence they came. But... ultimately... the library is my biggest source of reading material.

The 2018 value of our library cards

The Board of our regional library has an annual report in which, amongst other things, they report on the "value of a library card".

In 2018, based on the number of users and the value of materials borrowed... the average value of a library card was $661.

That number intrigued me and I once counted up the number of books I borrowed in a year and my value was well over $800. That's $800 that stayed in my pocket!

In many ways... getting books from the library ticks a bunch of boxes.

• It's good for me and my finances (more books available to read; less money spent on books, less square footage devoted to book storage, less hassle moving, teaches me patience).
• It's good for the environment (more reads/book).
• It's good for my community (more library patrons=bigger budget=more books).
• It might, however, not be so good for authors (less books sold).

I haven't even touched on all the other services offered through our local library: DVDs, CDs, audio books, magazines, podcasts, online language courses, research services, internet access, study space etc, etc... Heck, our library even has a puzzle table where there is always a 1000 piece puzzle on the go... cool! And it's all... FREE!***

For me, reconnecting with the pubic library system is one small step in living sustainably. It might not be as convenient as ordering a book via Amazon Prime but... I'll trade that for sustainable living... in this instance at least!


***Well... as long as you are a resident of the city in which the library is located. Which means somewhere along the line you are paying property taxes which then go toward supporting your local library. So not really "free" but... why not max out as much value from property taxes as possible by wringing out as much use from the library as possible!