Libraries

June 20 was the hottest day so far, +49 °C. But for the fol­low­ing days, the Inter­net promised a slight decrease in tem­per­a­ture, +46 °C, and then up to +42 °C. Of course, at +49 °C you don’t real­ly want to go out­side. Even in the evening, when the sun goes down and I go out to water the flow­ers, the air is filled with the heat of a sauna. So, on this very hot day, my grand­son per­suad­ed me to go to the library. The library is a 15-minute walk, and for some rea­son the sun was a lit­tle cov­ered with clouds in the morn­ing, so I agreed. Cloudi­ness is an extreme­ly rare occur­rence in sum­mer for these places. Usu­al­ly, the sky is so clear that at two o’clock in the sky you can see both the moon and the sun at the same time. True, when we walked back, the clouds dis­ap­peared some­where and it was a bit hot to walk with a bag of books.

I real­ly want to tell about libraries. How amaz­ing they are here and how every­thing is well orga­nized. True, I have not been in our libraries for a long time, maybe every­thing has changed there now. When I worked, I used the library at work. We had a good one, a lot of books, but every­thing was the old fash­ioned way: shelv­ing, an old librar­i­an, draw­ers with a fil­ing cab­i­net… And here libraries are like cul­tur­al and leisure cen­ters. They are usu­al­ly locat­ed near large edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and have their own sep­a­rate build­ing. The first free pub­lic library in Amer­i­ca was opened by Ben­jamin Franklin in 1731 (he is pic­tured on the $100). And now the libraries are ful­ly com­put­er­ized and con­nect­ed by a net­work. You place an order over the Inter­net. You can take not only books, but also a DVD with a video or an audio­book. If the book or movie you want isn’t cur­rent­ly in stock, you can order it and have it deliv­ered from anoth­er library or you’ll be put on a wait­ing list for that book.

Each mem­ber has his own account and a plas­tic card. You place an order on the Inter­net and, when it is set aside, you can come and pick it up. You can track the sta­tus of your appli­ca­tion in your account. Books which are ready for pick-up lie on the shelves under the cor­re­spond­ed let­ter and a piece of paper with the name of the cus­tomer is insert­ed into them. You find your order and go to the com­put­ers to reg­is­ter it on your card. Each book has a bar­code, you just scan it and now the book is already added to your account. Then you can put the book in your bag and walk around the library, choos­ing some­thing else that you liked from those dis­played on the shelves. The work of the library staff is hid­den from the eyes of the read­ers and you have to con­tact the staff only in case of some mis­un­der­stand­ing or ques­tion. At the exit, there are frames through which you pass with your bag, and at this time it is deter­mined whether all the bar­codes on the books have been scanned.

Each book has a bar­code, you just scan it and now the book is already added to your account

Books are also very easy to return, just drop them into the receiv­ing box. There are two box­es in front of the library’s entrance: one box for receiv­ing books, the oth­er for books that you want to donate to the library. Then you track in your account whether the book is accept­ed or not. Once my daugh­ter had a sit­u­a­tion where the hand­ed-in book was not marked, and she had to address it with the librar­i­an, the book was found, and this issue was set­tled. You can donate and pick up books with­out leav­ing your car, but only when order­ing, it should be not­ed that you will pick up books using the “pick up” win­dow. And then, dri­ving by this win­dow, the librar­i­an will reg­is­ter the books on your account and hand them over to you.

The library has a big park­ing lot, sep­a­rate park­ing for the dis­abled, which no one occu­pies except them. Once our coun­try was the most read­ing in the world, but now I see how many peo­ple here use the library! You can come here to study or to work at the com­put­er. And every­thing is free. There is no queue. The books are all new, well designed and in a good con­di­tion. I haven’t seen a sin­gle tat­tered book. Libraries also hold some the­mat­ic events, dis­cus­sions of books, meet­ings with writ­ers. Lan­guage adap­ta­tion cours­es are orga­nized. Now it’s hot to walk out­side, so moth­ers with three or four year old babies come here just to spend time. There is a play­room where chil­dren play some­thing, they are shown a pup­pet the­ater. There is a stand that dis­plays free tick­ets to a muse­um or exhi­bi­tion. Tick­ets are usu­al­ly giv­en for the next week, for two peo­ple, in the expec­ta­tion that the whole fam­i­ly will go and the rest of the fam­i­ly will still buy tickets.

There are such libraries all over Amer­i­ca. I found out from my rel­a­tives who live in the sub­urbs of Boston, they also have a huge library in the city, built on the same prin­ci­ple. I won­der what we have now in Rus­sia, are there such libraries? Per­haps in Moscow or St. Peters­burg they are orga­nized in this way, but hard­ly in the whole country.