From MAR to POI

A month and two weeks have passed since we made our move West to what might be called the Lake District adjoining Metro Detroit. It took that long since, yesterday, I braved an awesome traffic circle (a new one, and they’re very popular on new roads around here) to find our new library, formally the Commerce Township Community Library or, in modernese, CTCL. CTCL is associated to something that calls itself the The Library Network (TLN), made up of 65 regional libraries that, together, share a common catalog. The catalog is much more complicated and, initially, more difficult to use. The advantage is that one can order books from a rather large number of libraries and, patience playing its role, have it delivered at the nearest one to us.  That practice, Brigitte reminds me, is called an ILL, an inter-librart loan. I noted, this morning, that the larger libraries in our region, of which the Grosse Pointe System is one, do not participate in TLN. Nor does the most serious near one, the Southfield Public Library, an awesome library known to me because our offices once were near there. Alas.

A while back we spent a couple of weeks here at Monique’s “house sitting” for a spell. At that time, about a year or so ago, I noticed that the CTCL had had its DVD collection interfiled with books. Such an arrangement produces major problems, of course. Most films, do not have “authors” in the strict sense of the word. I did manage to find some of the Agatha Christy DVDs under C for Christy (or was it under A for Agatha? I forget.) In any case, I told Brigitte at the time that should we ever move West, I’d certainly volunteer to organize the Commerce films using separate shelves. Little did I suspect the problems I might encounter doing so.

Well, it turns out, they’ve actually done that job in the meanwhile. Some free space (and the library is pleasantly roomy) has now been equipped with shelves; all of the movies are now together. The classification system is by the title of the movie—which makes good sense. Commerce evidently uses the Concourse system, in use for a couple of decades by now and offered by BookSystems. Evidently the Grosse Pointe Library also uses the same classification approach; it too, like this one has made me wonder and shake my head. If you look for Agatha Christy movies, for example, and go to the letter C, you won’t see anything appropriate. By title, please, always by title. Looking for a Dorothy Sayers DVD? If you look under S  for Sayers you won’t find that worthy lady—but you might find Strong Poison—and Gaudy Night under G. Sometimes, however, given the interpretation applied by the librarian using the Concourse system, you actually might discover all of Sayers’ or Ruth Rendell’s DVDs together—because the largest name, on the cover of the DVD, will be the author’s name, not the title of the particular story. So it was in Grosse Pointe on some, but by no means all, such series.

Here at Commerce, Agatha Christy DVDs, clustered powerfully around Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, may be found under MAR for the lady and POI for the gentleman. But, at this stage, my research is far from over. Where, for instance are Tommy & Tuppence? Are they under TOM or TUP?

Elections, Elections

They’re everywhere, everywhere. Even we are now actively committed. The superpac ads are exploding all around us, we’re attending every spellbinding debate, we’re hitting the streets canvassing for our candidate, It (our candidate is unusual in being an It) is, we think, the only candidate worthy of political effort. And It only wants to raise our taxes (which tells you how we vote around here) by a staggering 0.7 mills per annum—or as much of that at maximum that It will need over the next eight years to balance Its budget. Yes, we say! Yes, to that.

One Jewel in the Crown

Entering my library last evening, I encountered a small round table prominently positioned in the entry passage. On it lay some six stacks of stark, white Xeroxed pages. They spelled out the grim facts of our local system’s financial woes. The Grosse Pointe communities in Michigan are unambiguously wealthy, but our library is suffering. Property values have plummeted and with it property taxes; our library gets 91 percent of its revenues from that source. County and state aide to libraries have shrunk 26 percent since 2007. We are now facing a 45 percent cutback on collection purchases and a 50 percent cut in administrative services—never mind all the rest. This leaflet, to be sure, is intended to drum up support for a millage rate increase. The library won’t close anytime soon. But it brought back a recurring thought: libraries are certainly at least one jewel in the crown of higher culture. I watch their health closely as an indicator, only too aware that the higher ranges of human experience depend on helpful institutions, and those, in turn, on a certain order and degree of wealth.

In the small circles of those concerned with books, the words of Ammianus Marcellinus, a sardonic fourth century Roman historian of Greek origin, echo. A gruff rhetorical phrase in his writings, describing his environment, was “libraries closed like tombs.” The time referred to was 380 AD. Now, to be sure, it was just a throw-away remark more intended to convey a flavor than the results of an exhausting census; we hear such comments quite often in our day as well. Careful scholars like George W. Houston (writing in the Library Quarterly in 1988) point out that Ammianus did not mean public libraries; they survived in the West at least until 455 AD. But you get my drift; the death of the Roman Empire did spell the death of such public institutions.

I got to wondering about those Roman public libraries. They existed, sure enough, but had a different character than our lending libraries. Books, meaning scrolls, could be taken out and read—not at tables but in surrounding gardens, standing in the shade or walking about; under the eaves in the shade, as it were. Public readings were a common feature at these places so that even those of the great majority who could not read could gather and hear books read aloud. Books, literature, learning, the intellectual, the spiritual life belong in some ways to the immaterial dimension so that their structures are really relationships between people of like interests. But in this realm we can’t partake of any kind of community without physical underpinnings. These require stalwart votes to pass that temporary millage increase. Failing that, here in Grosse Pointe, one of the jewels in the crown of the Detroit metro area, we will lose one of our three library branches and face 30 percent cutbacks in hours and in staff.

Libraries Don’t Vanish

Several hours of Internet outage this morning stopped my habit-world dead in its tracks. My mornings are spent on the web, and the outage made me feel as if someone big had sat down on my chest. It took me a few aimless circles around obstructions down in this basement before vague memories returned. Ah, yes. Back in the Long Ago. I used to write on paper with a pen under a bright light. And all else equal I might have read a book. I had worked in the Long Ago. Back then the telephone facilitated communications, but the work proceeded on paper. The institutional support was the publishing industry and libraries. Libraries sometimes closed, but they did not disappear. Nor did the books of publishers when they went out of business. The books remained on shelves. Answers were difficult to get, to be sure, and it took longer to get them.

Back when the world began, thus in Tirschenreuth immediately after World War II, we had no libraries; indeed it took two or three years before even a tiny bookstore opened. At first we had no newspapers either. Later on, living in Staufenberg to the west, the nearest so-called library was in Gernsbach three kilometers away, and we paid a small fee there for every borrowed book. Indeed, when I come to think of it, that was the only library I ever visited in Germany. In Kansas City, after our arrival here, weekly trips to the downtown library became a sacred ritual.

I went upstairs to commune with Brigitte. Libraries. In Europe. She is some years my senior and remembers more about those times. The war had no sooner ended, she relates, than the occupying powers caused all libraries to close. Bang. You can hear doors slamming and the locks clanging shut. Why? Well, libraries were ordered to sanitize their contents—to remove all traces of history-rewritten produced by the Nazi powers. In her school library in Weissenfels, whole shelves were actually covered with signs forbidding even touching books. A small set of shelves were open to the students—while ideological cleaning proceeded. The city’s main library, a grand structure, stood dead and mute for years. Call it a library outage. But the physical structure still remained.

Everything has a silver lining. Last time this happened I went half crazy talking to recorded voices at AT&T and resetting two computers at regular intervals for the better part of a day. But it turned out that the Internet returned miraculously all on its own. Did so again today. I wrote on paper. I read a book. A novel experience in the morning. Brought back memories of another time. Not all bad, the Long Ago. I seemed to have a lot more time this morning.

Love Your Library Month!

In this domain, I assure you, every month is Library Month—and every week is Library Week. At the urgings of my own Library (we e-mail each other frequently), I am also more than pleased to promote "Love Your Library Month." A wry chuckle escapes me. I've just finished posting an entry on the subject of love, and now, in a way, my library wonders if I really love it. Yes, dear, I do. I really do. But ours is a, you might say, polyandrous relationship, and with so many, many mates you may be unaware of One whose dedication is unflagging!

Libraries, Librarians

I’ve been very lucky to receive a complete and wonderful 1956 Encyclopedia Britannica for Christmas. On that more elsewhere, but it is at least one reason for today’s posting on libraries and librarians (ht here and the link here.). Not just libraries but librarians as well play an extraordinary role in the life of the Ghulf Genes, hence this link will be of interest to quite a few of you out there.

Libraries

The smallest public library I ever used was also, curiously, the best. It was located on perhaps the largest U.S. military base in Germany then (late 1950s) and now. Baumholder is and was one of two gigantic artillery and armored firing ranges. The post housed (still does) 10,000 troops and about a thousand dependents, so-called, the spouses and children of officers and non-coms. The library had about 5,000 titles but these of the highest quality. I’ve often wondered since how that had come about. I could and did sample the best of literature, history, philosophy, and science there. It was astonishing. A mere handful of us used the place—honestly, really. The place had the strange aura of a branch office, but of Mount Olympus, descended to the great wastes of organized destruction. Compact yet complete; empty like an Anglican church; staffed by diffident and lonely DOD civil servants starved for bookish conversation which, despite or because of the emptiness, we held in hushed and reverent tones. Yes, yes. Baumholder library. It surprised me to discover that it’s still there—but updated. It has its own website now; it still welcomes the nostalgic browser with its on-line catalogue; and in that catalogue I could still find the old mile-stones of my personal development—in the old editions yet.

The military has a culture of its own; it extends beyond the merely martial; the military knows much about values and is impervious to markets. Back in those days, with a universal draft drawing all males, it served as a kind of national educational system in which the teaching of values was not only permitted but expected. And the odd corollary of that culture were tiny libraries dense in cultural and intellectual riches.

We lived in many places and drew on the holdings of vast public urban libraries. I’ve used academic libraries going to school as well—and midsized facilities in historic places like Fairfax, Va. Fairfax had a rich Civil War collection; not surprising. The big publics were good libraries, but there is something about a library you can actually get to know intimately. Here in Grosse Pointe the library ought to be rich, dense, and satisfying: this is a very upscale area. It isn’t. The wealth of inhabitants has gone into display. Our poor library struggles, means well, tries very hard. But it cannot be compared to that strange chapel of culture in Baumholder.

The library in Overland Park, Kansas, was (probably still is) the other shining beacon in our own limited exposure. It was much bigger, to be sure, way out there on the edges of the suburbs (these days enfolded by suburbs that stretch into the dim distance beyond it, shopping center after shopping center—until at last the grain elevators take over). Loved the Overland Park Library. A stellar achievement—probably of one energetic and yet enlightened personality, no doubt well known in his or her own circle, not much beyond, one of those people little seen, never feted in the media, who uphold the real culture here in America as also everywhere.

These thoughts to mark the occasion that school has ended—and in consequence of it, our library hours are changing. Nota bene: you’ve got to get in there before 5 p.m. on Fridays or Katie will have barred the door.