Libraries: triumph and woe
Jan. 18th, 2011 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaWhen ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alecaustin was visiting last weekend, he helped me put together bookshelves for in the guest room, and now I am populating them and letting the other books have a bit more room. I have moved all the poetry, plays, and short stories (sorted into two sections for anthologies and single-author collections) into the guest room, so if someone is staying there and didn't bring enough to read, or if they just want to pick up something that looks interesting but don't want to actually take it home, they have some chance of finishing a meaningful chunk. (Not that we are very hospitable people with the current health concerns, but alecaustin or markgritter's brother Matthew who is no longer on lj might still like that sort of thing.) I have also put biographies, economics, philosophy, random humanities/unclassifiable, history of technology, and cryptography/spy history (yes, I shelve them together) in there.
In here (that is, in my office), I have moved the brag shelf.alecaustin, markgritter, and timprov agreed rather reproachfully that this is the least braggy location for it, but really, I wanted the novels to have a chance to spread out into the shelf in the music room that was holding it and other things, so they'd all be downstairs together and have more room, and I just didn't feel right about putting the brag shelf in the guest room. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. Or browse," just did not seem like the thing.
I am ridiculously pleased with all of this. The history section has a chance to spread out in here, and oh, it needs it. We are getting a lot more history and biographies than we were when we allocated room space, so the expansions are being well-used--especially with a lot of Grandpa's history and biographies yet to read and shelve. (I...haven't shelved the stuff of Grandpa's I haven't read. This means it has taken over my old desk--his desk--completely. It is a bit daunting. I used to have three piles of books to read: fiction, nonfiction, and borrowed stuff. Now I have all of that plus a dozen piles of Grandpa's stuff.)
In less congenial library news, the public library I use seems to have redone its system in a way that obliterated my reading list without warning. I hope this is not the case--I have to call and make sure there's no help for it--but in the meantime I am keening quietly. I had over a hundred books on my nonfiction reading list alone, and it was greatly convenient to just go and click down the lists to request a bunch of books. And now--and now--oh, gloom. I am dreadful at remembering which of the authors I wanted to read were actually at the library in fiction sections, and in nonfiction it's just hopeless, because only about half of the things were either authors or titles I could predict that I would find interesting and the rest were things that sounded interesting when I read or heard about them somewhere. Oh, reading list. I suppose this is what I get for entrusting the reading list to someone else's system, but really, it does seem like they might have warned us at least. And I don't want to have to look in various files to see what I wanted from the library, I want to use their site the way I was using their site. Also even the things I remember I wanted are fraught because I used the list to keep track of what I hadn't watched yet from the library's DVDs. I have my booklog to remind me which Ruth Rendell novels I've read, but where am I in the various British mystery TV series that help me through my workout? I don't know! I had it in electronic brain form!
Sigh. But that's enough woe and doom from me; I should get back to this novelette.
alecaustin was visiting last weekend, he helped me put together bookshelves for in the guest room, and now I am populating them and letting the other books have a bit more room. I have moved all the poetry, plays, and short stories (sorted into two sections for anthologies and single-author collections) into the guest room, so if someone is staying there and didn't bring enough to read, or if they just want to pick up something that looks interesting but don't want to actually take it home, they have some chance of finishing a meaningful chunk. (Not that we are very hospitable people with the current health concerns, but alecaustin or markgritter's brother Matthew who is no longer on lj might still like that sort of thing.) I have also put biographies, economics, philosophy, random humanities/unclassifiable, history of technology, and cryptography/spy history (yes, I shelve them together) in there.In here (that is, in my office), I have moved the brag shelf.
alecaustin, markgritter, and timprov agreed rather reproachfully that this is the least braggy location for it, but really, I wanted the novels to have a chance to spread out into the shelf in the music room that was holding it and other things, so they'd all be downstairs together and have more room, and I just didn't feel right about putting the brag shelf in the guest room. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. Or browse," just did not seem like the thing.I am ridiculously pleased with all of this. The history section has a chance to spread out in here, and oh, it needs it. We are getting a lot more history and biographies than we were when we allocated room space, so the expansions are being well-used--especially with a lot of Grandpa's history and biographies yet to read and shelve. (I...haven't shelved the stuff of Grandpa's I haven't read. This means it has taken over my old desk--his desk--completely. It is a bit daunting. I used to have three piles of books to read: fiction, nonfiction, and borrowed stuff. Now I have all of that plus a dozen piles of Grandpa's stuff.)
In less congenial library news, the public library I use seems to have redone its system in a way that obliterated my reading list without warning. I hope this is not the case--I have to call and make sure there's no help for it--but in the meantime I am keening quietly. I had over a hundred books on my nonfiction reading list alone, and it was greatly convenient to just go and click down the lists to request a bunch of books. And now--and now--oh, gloom. I am dreadful at remembering which of the authors I wanted to read were actually at the library in fiction sections, and in nonfiction it's just hopeless, because only about half of the things were either authors or titles I could predict that I would find interesting and the rest were things that sounded interesting when I read or heard about them somewhere. Oh, reading list. I suppose this is what I get for entrusting the reading list to someone else's system, but really, it does seem like they might have warned us at least. And I don't want to have to look in various files to see what I wanted from the library, I want to use their site the way I was using their site. Also even the things I remember I wanted are fraught because I used the list to keep track of what I hadn't watched yet from the library's DVDs. I have my booklog to remind me which Ruth Rendell novels I've read, but where am I in the various British mystery TV series that help me through my workout? I don't know! I had it in electronic brain form!
Sigh. But that's enough woe and doom from me; I should get back to this novelette.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 02:33 am (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 08:40 pm (UTC)Oh lovely! (sarcastic, library reading list being obliterated)
Well it sounds like it was wonderful while it lasted. Despite the Toronto PL and Markham PL being differently wonderful in many ways, neither of them have had personalized electronic reading lists that were anywhere close to that useful. e.g.: Prior to the most recent revision, TPL's was sessional only - i.e.: only lasted for the duration of your logged in session - which logged you out automatically after 20 minutes of not reserving a book, not general activity like adding items to the list or doing catalogue searches.
My to-read piles have been morphing oddly in the past few months. My list of books-read-in-the-past-four-months at this time last year was somewhere around 5-15 books long, and consisted mostly of books I'd wanted to read from before the period started. This year it's somewhere in the 90s and has mostly impulse picks from the library/blogs, that I might have seen before the period, but wasn't sufficiently sure about to buy, and hence add to the to-read piles. More romance novel covers for sure. The influence of having a relative in iffy health condition I guess.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-20 02:51 pm (UTC)I got excited on Tuesday when something very similar to what we were planning to build showed up on Craigslist for only $60. But the shelf unit cannot be taken apart for transport, so that's a no-go. Grr.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-22 09:05 pm (UTC)