Saturday, July 10, 2010

Confession: I'm a library snob...

This is a recent discovery that I've made in the past few weeks since returning to the small hometown where I grew up. Growing up I loved our small town library. It was the only library I knew and I looked forward to our trips so I could check out as many books as possible (usually 15-20) despite the librarians  disapproval saying I could never finish that many books in 3 weeks (I did). I had a special bag that I kept all of my library books in and I went home and began devouring them one after the other sometimes staying up all night long reading (I wonder if my mom knew).

Then many years later I moved away from my small town and for the last three years my libraries have looked like this:

I've become accustomed to not only being surround by physically beautiful libraries but also having access to millions of books. So when I left these millions of volumes and returned to my small hometown in rural Nevada I have been nothing but disappointed by the library. 

My visits to the library go something like this: I make a list of books, check the computer to see if they're available (most the library computer has never even heard of the books I want), a few times the book is available, I excitedly go and look for the book, it's not where it's suppose to be. I ask and get a response inquiring about my alphabetizing skills, and then I leave disappointed and annoyed. (And many of their audio books are on cassettes). 

I've put in requests for books which takes weeks and the library has no WIFI *gasp* I was shocked with I learned this. Where do you go to work? Where do you go to write in a quiet space? Seemingly I have become accustomed to much grander libraries and my beloved childhood library now serves as a source of disappointment.

Sadly, all of this led to the discovery that I am library snob. 

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