Library books to suit many tastes in reading

Fiction section, grpl.org 2/2019 (click image for full-size image view)

The top of every other bookshelf end row has a large signboard telling the genre collected on those shelves, along with a playful slogan or tag-line that fits that category of literature:

Give thanks with a great INSPIRATIONAL read
Find a ROMANCE you'll love
Unearth great MYSTERY books
New game, new voices, URBAN FICTION, real expressions
Boldly discover new worlds - SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY & HORROR

With the advent of cable and satellite TV in the 1980s and then the home use of Internet in the 2000s, the hours available each day for a person to seek answers, information, entertainment or diversion have not grown, but the choices and perception of interacting with the materials has expanded. As a result, the volume of books loaned to residents has not increased with growing population size; in many cases even as titles published electronically and in print have increased, sales and library lending has declined. One commenter suggested that maybe 5 or 10 % of the US population reads for pleasure (not work-related or assigned in courses of study), but that those people have slightly increased the amount of reading that they do as choices of format has expanded to included audio download (while commuting, dog-walking, or dish washing, for instance) and e-books to carry on cellphone or dedicated e-reading device to fill the time spent waiting in line, or in-between tasks when there are 5 or 10 minutes available.

Public libraries serve many functions in the age of Internet and mobile computing and communicating. The act as places of warmth to those without a home, and places of cooling during hot summer days to these same people. Job seekers and people lacking Internet at home or work can use the public terminals for set daily time limits when they login. Library staff organize a range of events and programs each month to suit all the populations - children, retired, care-givers, parents and working-age people, teens, and so on. A large collection of music CD and feature film (and non-fiction) DVD is available for loan to residents or to people far-away who make a request though the state-wide interlibrary loan system.

In the time of the Information Economy and Knowledge Workers, it is especially important to be able to speak with a trained reference librarian to solve a problem, seek an answer, or make a strategy to gather needed information and make decisions. Like the rest of the society and economy, the public library and its branches continue to look for ways to be of most service to those it serves.

memoirs in print, World War II (city library, English language editions)

click image for full file view: Dewey Decimal classification 940.53... (start)

At the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Public Library there are about 42 shelves with books recounting events and experiences of the Second World War. A few are English translations of books whose authors wrote in another language. But most are told by writers whose first language is English. So this large collection, a subset of all English language titles published to date, mostly excludes the point of view and voices of non-anglophone Allies, as well as Axis combatants and others who were neutral or at least not connected directly to either the Allies or Axis leaders. Impressionistically taking a typical shelf of about 20 books, multiplying by 42 shelves, gives a crude estimate of the 840 books available to browse. The ones borrowed by patrons and the ones held in remote storage, thus, fall outside of this simple calculation.
     Thinking of the long process of drafting, editing, and working with a publisher and distributor, it is not an exaggeration to say that for every book that stands on these shelves, perhaps 2 or 3 reached the manuscript (or typescript) draft stage, but never reached the printing press (or maybe vanity press only for private circulation; not public non-fiction shelves of city libraries). And for every book ready for readers to borrow here, maybe there were 10 others that got past the day-dreaming stage and made a start with a chapter or two, but which faced delay or distraction or the author's own demise. Perhaps two or three times the number of "begun, but not completed" books developed in the mind of the potential writer, but never were set to paper - instead left to oral history or recorded in audio notes.
     Speculatively, for every published book that this library purchased, suppose there were 5 others not purchased; 15 others that were complete drafts but which never were printed for sale; 150 others that began to be set on paper but never were completed; and 400 others that took hold in the potential author's mind, but which never were committed to paper. Scaling these numbers up 100 times these speculations would mean for every 100 books of this kind there could be 500 titles to choose from (in print, but not purchased by this city library); 1500 others that were complete drafts that did reach publication; 15,000 that were begun but never completed, and 40,000 that were conceived in the potential author's mind but never took physical form. In other words, each of these approximately 840 physical books is the pinnacle of a large pyramid built of all those potential memoirs that never reached the shelf to circulate among fellow veterans of the War, their relatives and the students of history in succeeding generations.

click image for full file view: Dewey Decimal classification 940.54.. (end)

It would be interesting to know if the rate (per capita) of memoir publication were something similar to this volume of output seen from English language authors, chiefly from the countries of USA, UK, Eire, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the British Empire's Commonwealth countries, for that matter. And so long as speculation and imagination are let loose, it would also be interesting to analytically discern some of the main purposes and effects among authors in the telling and publishing of personal interpretations of events on the ground, as experienced: is there distinct therapeutic value that results from articulating "vast periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of intense violence," as some writers have described armed conflict. Or is there some sense of reckoning or justice and honor that comes from recounting the names and circumstances of others destroyed in the course of events; recording misdeeds as well as documenting other actions worthy of praise. Or is these, above all, some kind of instructive lesson about the great waste of life, resources, social fabric, and harm to the planet's creatures to be set in ink, "lest we forget." There is built-in drama, both comedy and tragedy, in the telling and reading of these pages. But that seems to be a less important function, compared to the several other purposes that may be intended by facing the details, checking facts, and polishing one's prose and verse to make it presentable for publication.
     The demographic shape of the blood-soaked edge of opposing forces is males between age 18 and 25, with a relatively slight number of 17 year olds joining up, and relatively smaller proportion of those above the age of 35. So if most of the published accounts of events and experiences come from this biggest demographic segment, then the images and words will have stuck during a formative or impressionable point of one's life and continued to shape post-war outlook and approach to problem solving. Of course, the ratio of those facing direct risk of life in combat to those who make possible the operation of uniformed military services on air, land, and sea is another kind of pyramid; not a demographic one, but a similar disproportion: every fighting man was dependent on perhaps 25 or 50 or 100 others who produced, organized, and distributed logistical needs both physical and informational. Caring for those harmed, and repairing what is ruined in the clashes, as well as the thousands of record-keepers also were instrumental to putting a pilot in the air, a sailor on a ship, or a soldier on the march. So, if the memoir writers mainly come from those people directly affected by combat, then the 840 books on these shelves is a testament to the will of those motivated and capable of putting these matters in ink. But for every title that is on the shelf and available for circulation among library card holders in 2018, more than 70 years since armed conflict ended, there must have been so many others that have not been published. And for every veteran of these wars and all others, too, many more finally reached a point in their lives and with the passage of time to be able to tell family or friends of some events and experiences that haunted them forever and ever since they occurred. But even more, perhaps, never did feel able to articulate those things that have stuck with them to the end.
     The seven-part documentary series of 2007 by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, The War, uses four U.S. cities as intersecting lenses to tell the stories at home and in the field: Sacramento, CA; Waterbury, CT; Luverne, MN; and Mobile, AL. Condensing the global conflict into personal stories is a huge undertaking that reduces "too much information" into terms that an uninformed viewer, several generations removed from the war years, can understand or at least glimpse a little of. But looking at the 840 titles here on the shelves, patiently waiting for new readers to discover the stories told, it seems that there is much more to understand than what documentary film is capable of expressing.

Ancestor Investigations Performed Here

This curious sign above the side-by-side computer stations along the wall nearest the bookshelves that have been dedicated to genealogical study and reference materials caught my eye. It would be interesting to measure the extent of interest in ancestry among people in various societies: immigrant countries like Australia, Canada, USA, South Africa, as well as most of Latin America would seem to have the most urgent motivation to learn about family lines before, during and since the moment of immigration. But perhaps even among non-immigrant countries there are demographic patterns in the study of one's ancestors; for example, it could be keenest among those with landed property or those poor in cash, but rich in ancestry, noble or ignoble.

click for full-size image: "Ancestor Investigations Performed Here" at library

There are several building materials available for making meaning of one's life, the aspirations projected for one's children, and the longings for continuity to one's ancestors. One's life meaning can come from achievements, worldly and economic on the one hand, or more intangible markers on the other hand. One's purpose can come from one's occupations and preoccupations, whether they are gainfully paid and require vocational training, or whether they are avocational in nature. One's significance and consequence can derive in peer respect given and received, or rooted instead separate to peer approval or disapproval, governed and estimated instead by other measurements attained. One's direction in life can come by benchmarking one's peers or one's (extended) family members to show one's position relative to theirs: adhering to the precedents or on the contrary purposefully not conforming to those patterns.

Looking at the many journals, newsletters, reference books of ships' passengers, marriages, deaths, census and church records, in principle all names since record keeping began (and earlier still when the reference book brings data from overseas sources before that) will appear in one or more of these publications. So one should be able to identify and trace all appearances of a given soul from first instance to final disposition. And by this same logic, those of us alive today, will be recorded in various forms so that future generations may discover our presence in publication form the same way.

While there is hardly a crowd of hobbyist or professional researcher filling the space of this specialized treasury of names and dates, still there are many who do have some degree of interest in one or more lines of their own families' trajectories that intersects with the living descendants contemporary to the genealogist herself or himself. These quiet shelves hold the answers to many peoples wonderings about who they are, who they could be, how their lives measure up to those before (and by implication, too, measuring up to those who will follow in turn).

books, beaches, imaginary worlds

¨Books can take you places¨ used to be a catch phrase at libraries, Public Service Announcements, summer reading programs, GED and alternative education promotional posters, and so on. It is still true today, but the phrase is not so much in circulation these days.

[click for full size image: display top of cabinets on 2nd floor of Traverse Area District Library to promote reading at the beach: 6 July 2016]

Whether the printed page appears in pocket-size, magazine size, serial or all in one edition hardback or softcover the cultural significance is the same: one or more authors, and likely one or more editors pored over the manuscript (seldom written by hand; so more true-to-say typescript) and then a chain of technical experts and logistical processes connect the finished work with the final distribution in print or electronically for reading on portable electronic device. There is the technology of inks, papers, the graphic design to interpret the title and story inside, the pricing and promotional efforts by marketing specialists. There may be price points for book launch, then the rates at brick-and-mortar retail sellers, a 2ndary market for used books online and at stores, and the tertiary market of yard sales, free boxes and donations.

So when faced with an impressive collection of books like this, it is worth remembering what is implicated far in the past when author(s) cherished an inkling of a story and finally months or decades of life experience later produce a draft to work its way to the printing and distribution stages. And the implication stretches equally far in the opposite direction, too; toward an indefinite future in the life cycle of a particular edition, or maybe extended with multiple reprintings, as well. But in the release of the camera's shutter, that long timeline from conception to final disposition of a book is frozen momentarily to display the impressive cumulative result of many hands and minds.