Past libe

DL was telling me how much his kids like visiting their local public library. This prompted a discussion about the changes these institutions have gone through in the previous few decades.

Nowadays, I use a plastic card to log into a terminal, scan my selections (20 per visit, to a maximum of 40), tear off the receipt, and usually leave without ever having interacted with a librarian. If I later need to renew some items, I can simply do so online.

When I was a lad, it was very different. For a start, we knew all of the library staff well. We had to because, besides stamping the due date in/on the back of everything, they decided if a selection could be reborrowed or reserved. More importantly, they had an intimate knowledge of the library’s contents. There was no electronic catalogue to check.

Access to material was strictly controlled via pieces of coloured cardboard. Kids received four orange library cards, two pink cards and one white. The orange allowed you to borrow hardback books. The pink ones were for paperbacks. The white card was for borrowing thickly laminated posters. Either the orange or pink cards also did for music/spoken-word cassettes. Can’t remember which.

Adults were dealt a similar hand, except their library cards were light blue, yellow and white. And instead of children’s posters, they could take home art prints to temporarily adorn their walls.

Note that the two groups weren’t accessing the same hardbacks and paperbacks, at least not as far as fiction went. The adult versions were clearly marked “ADULT” and precocious lads like me couldn’t borrow them unless we convinced a parent to devote one of their cards to the purpose.

When, as a teen, you graduated from orange’n’pink to light blue’n’yellow, it was a big deal. Suddenly, no-one could stop you grabbing a whole stack of B-grade sci-fi yarns with titillating covers. Ahem. What I mean to say is – suddenly, no-one could stop you accessing more intellectually challenging fare and broadening your cultural horizons.

Back then, libraries didn’t loan out movies on VHS or Beta. The idea of borrowing a videogame was unimaginable…although you could book the Apple IIe for 15 minutes at a time and hone your platforming skills on “Sammy Lightfoot”. Instead of a free Wi-Fi link to Wikipedia, etc., we had the Reference Section. Do they even still make almanacs?

Leaving without using my six non-poster cards was not an option. If, for whatever reason, the family didn’t make it to the library the following week, there was a chance I’d run out of unread stuff and die of boredom. As a result, I tackled a number of series completely out of order, based on which volumes happened to be on the shelves. Young me had faith the missing chapters would turn up eventually.

The library of my childhood was floored with carpet squares we’d sneakily lift, then press down into place again before anyone noticed. There was an English librarian we called The English Lady. For a while, there was a stray kitten hanging about that we tried unsuccessfully to adopt. Our existing cat wouldn’t accept it. Placid by nature, at the sight of the interloper it went hissing-clawing berserk!

The cassettes were housed in revolving racks. The posters stood longways in planter-type boxes. I recall competing for Apple IIe useage with a girl from another school, the two of us repeatedly rebooking the green-screened machine after each other. To get to the male or female toilets, you had to walk through the study room. Shithouse building design, that. (Sorry.)

It’s hard to convey what a source of constant wonders public libraries were prior to Netflix, iBooks, Steam, comiXology and the rest. Before most folks had instant, virtually unlimited access to fillums, novels, games, comics, etc. at low cost. The first time you heard of a book’s existence wasn’t when the author tweeted the contract signing – it was when you spied the published tome on the New Releases shelf, freshly covered in plastic and just begging for a due-date stamp.

I won’t claim that we loved our local library any more than the kids of today love theirs. But we did.