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Libraries!

Luciana

Skeptical Carioca
Luciana
Joined
Aug 5, 2001
Messages
10,984
Location
Rio de Janeiro - RJ
We MUST talk about libraries!!!

When I get disenchanted withlife in general, Ijust wish I could hide in a library forever with 4 meals a day and half hour of sunlight per dayer, I think intimate visitation time would be nice also. But I digress...

What is it you like in a library? How should it be? What is your current favorite, and why? What should all libraries have?

My current favorite one is a public library in downtown Rio. I'm not affiliated to it, I just go there to study. Those are hours when I forget the world I'm in. Everything is just perfect - temperature, the seat, the large desk, the silence. It's full of people even on sunny Sunday mornings. There is a cultural center outside with a great cappuccino - yeah, I'm biased. So this is where I love to spend my free hours.
 
Well, I certainly like the one I spend a lot of my time in! Admittedly, I don't have as much time as I'd like to read the books, because I have work to do, but on the other hand I get paid... :D
 
Our library is sort of stuffy and sanitary. I think it should be more like our local used bookstore.

The bookstore is huge, and they have a small performing stage and Internet café. Chess boards and couches nearby the stage. Small ensembles play on weekends, folk, acoustic, Celtic, classical, whatever. Or maybe they will have talks on art or local issues. They have weeks with special book themes - Banned book week is always good. There are big fluffy chairs all around the store and you are free to sit and read as long as you want.

The store has odd little knickknacks for sale too, hidden among the vast shelves of books.

Libraries! take a hint!
 
Kopji said:
Our library is sort of stuffy and sanitary. I think it should be more like our local used bookstore.
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Well, gosh, if you're going to live on the Mongolian Rim, you just have to deal with these things.

ETA: Oops, misread your location. I'll Google Mogollan Rim and get back to you. :blush:
 
It must be an Arizona thing, Kopji, because I feel the same way. As much as I enjoy the Mesa library, I am in love with a few of the local bookstores. For all the reasons you mention, plus... sorry LL, but the selection is better. It seems to me that our library caters to schoolchildren and those that just want to read the latest Grisham/Clancy/Steele novel.

ETA: Kopji, is that a Bookman's you have up there?
 
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I believe that a must see in Athens is our legal Library. It is expanded in three floors in an old building in the old city. My business associate inherited its core from his father who was a lawyer. His dad inherited the books from his grandfather. George expanded and it's the policy I follow although it costs a lot.

We believe that this Library is sort of cursed though. :) Its owners died under strange circumstances. In our Library smoking is allowed, plus drinking water,coffee and whisky. People have access to it 24 h a day and since last year we have installed two computers with access to the Internet and in a network with our pcs at the office. Those who have access to the Library they are allowed to walk with bare foot and generally speaking " feel at home" but not bother the others--especially me. Music is allowed if it doesn't disturb others.

I could talk for hours for the furniture. Each piece has its history.

Our Library is a gem in our small city and it is one of George's great accomplishments. He is the best. Period.

My favorite library in Athens is the Library of the French School of Archaeology. It's in a huge garden, on a hill and overlooks the city and the port of Piraeus.Generally speaking, it's a relaxed place with lovely French faces that study while they are drinking coffee and chewing croissants. It specializes in History of Art.

A very classy and cosy Library is the Library of the Dept of Modern Greek Studies in King's College. A meeting place for the chess players of Cambridge. It has a real British atmosphere, as it is described in novels.I bet that it has a ghost. :) In the late hours you can encounter various VIPs of Cambridge with a glass of whisky playing chess or discussing with low voice about the Balkans pretending that they study.

The Library that takes your breath by all means is the New York Public Library and this is because it's a library for the big audience. It's the real house of democracy. Books, Libraries, knowledge in general must be available to the general public. A Library cannot be a place for the few and the "esthete" for this reason I believe that from all the libraries I have visitied this is the best library in the world.

BTW a Fnac opens its doors in a couple of days in Athens.
 
CFLarsen said:
I have my own.
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Me too. Just finished it, actually. I found that, living in the sticks, it is just easier to buy want I want even if it takes months/years to get around to reading them.
 
I can't get anything done in a library. I have to find what I need and get the
f:Dk out. In college, I'd go looking for a source for a paper, and spend hours and miss classes screwing around, reading 19th century periodicals and such.
 
What I like most about my library? The paycheck. I am a librarian.
 
Babe from Missouri said:
I can't get anything done in a library. I have to find what I need and get the
f:Dk out. In college, I'd go looking for a source for a paper, and spend hours and miss classes screwing around, reading 19th century periodicals and such.
Click to expand...

Someone was in my room when I skimmed through this, so Ijust saw the highlights "I can't wait to get done in a library"... "f:Dk", "screwing"....

Kid you not!

:D

I never buy more books than I can possibly read in the upcoming months. First, because I like going out to buy, so if I buy too many of them all at once, how am I going to justify the browsing around/cappuccinos in my favorite book shop? Plus, if I have too many, and a new release interests me, my practical self will say "read what you have and buy more later", and that leads to frustration. Third, my interests change. So I really prefer to buy four or five books at once, never more than that.
 
Yesterday was All Saint's Day in Brazil, a national holiday. I stayed at the library from 1 to 6pm. There were some 70 people there, also studying.

All things considered, what I really like there is the silence, nearly absolute, and the temperature, which is just right. Not the books, as I always take my own.

When I was a kid, my father took me to a public library with a huge section of young adults books, with low shelves so I could pick my own. It was a building of exposed concrete - boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, with no air conditioning. The grey everywhere added to the sense that I was in the middle of Blade Runner. The books were the only colorful things in that ugly, humid, bare-walled place. I'd read two or three in a day, and I remember those were lovely afternoons.
 
I think our library might have book police to watch out for people bringing their own books. :) I am greeted by large-yet-friendly scanners and faintly humming electronic gadgets and glaring fluorescent lights at the door. The old Dewey card filing system has been cut up in favor of computer lookup, but now they have about 50 years worth of little squares of scrap paper to write notes on.

The Mogollon Rim (mug-ee-awn) is in Arizona, not Mongolia north of China, famous for their beef. :p

I think it's a weird Spanish/Mexican word like Oaxaca (wa-hock-a).
 
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