Netboox

From Nicole Engard via Gerrit, here’s a question someone posted on a forum:

was just thinking. my sister does -alot- of reading, and spends like $1000 a year on just books alone. most of them she reads just once then never looks at again. is there any kind of like…video rental store but for books? would make things alot cheaper, plus once one person has read one the next person can get enjoyment from it etc

I really hope they were joking. Really.

But at the same time, describing libraries as “video rental stores but for books” does give them an appeal and coolness factor that might not otherwise be there for non-bookworms. (For us bookworms, of course, the mere word “library” alone is enough to tingle our spines. Home sweet home! Libraries are soul food to me.)

After coming up with the title of this post, I decided to google it to see if anyone else has thought of it. They have. :)

I could never do this. I mark up my books like crazy (I don’t read much fiction) and love to go back and reference them for papers, blog posts, and personal study. I’ve got a lot of books, and my wife asked me the other day (since we’re moving soon) if I planned to keep all of my books. I was stunned that she thought I would ever part with any of them. :)

Ben - I checked out the originating blog and laughed my pants off. After putting them back on, I thought of how sad it was that libraries are so unfamiliar to people that they have to blog about it. Or, its equally sad that some people post questions without thinking first.
Carry on - to the library!

As a librarian, I’m not sure whether to laugh my head off or go sit in a corner and cry over this one! This was almost as good as a conversation with one of our Dean’s the other day about “needing some kind of online thing, a list, you know … for our masters theses … kind of like those drawers with cards we used to have (the card catalog in the library) … that will have a citation and information about the thesis and where to find it.” Oh, you mean like the online catalog we use to find our library books and the masters theses we have in our collection?? Yah. I’m still choking over that one!

Connor: Books are like children — you can’t just get rid of them. How heartless! :P (I do plan to weed through my collection soon, but that’s only to get rid of books that don’t hold any interest for me — usually leftover textbooks that roommates have abandoned here, that sort of thing. But the vast majority of the books — those I’ve lovingly purchased or received as gifts — could never be torn away from me without also tearing out part of my very soul. I’m keeping them. :))

James: Sometimes the world is a scary place. ;)

Terri: Ouch — you really do have to wonder sometimes! :) Things we take for granted aren’t so commonplace as we might think. Or else there are just some really clueless people out there. :)