James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke (By the Book), New York Times Book Review, December 30, 2018, p.7.

What kind of reader were you as a child?I loved the bookmobile. My favorite books were the Hardy Boys. When I was growing up, people did not have a lot of discretionary income, and on Thursday afternoons the arrival of the bookmobile on our dead-end street sent kids running down to the cul-de-sac to be first in line for Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  In many ways it was a grand time to be around. 

COMMENT

     The Hardy Boys is hardly great literature, but in the context of the miraculous bookmobile it became life-changing reading for Burke who grew up to become a mystery writer. It's hard to imagine the Internet having any kind of similar effect to foster a love of reading within a whole neighborhood of kids.

     Burke mentions that his family didn't have a lot of money to spend on books. One way that libraries can promote their service is by reminding people how much value their library card offers. Recently, the Salt Lake Public Library and other libraries have started to print receipts that estimate how much money you saved by borrowing library materials instead of buying them.  In 2018, my teenage daughter borrowed over $1000 worth, and I borrowed at least as much. My property taxes for the library are less than $100/year.  Offering a visible metric also has the psychological effect of making me want to borrow even more stuff so that I can feel virtuous for getting such a good bargain.

     Nonetheless, I have been at meetings with librarians who have pooh-poohed the importance of cost savings through shared resource use (these people tend to be administrators who earn about double the local median income). Their argument is that digital information has become so cheap that people will inevitably prefer the convenience of purchasing what they want over the inconvenience of using shared library resources.  Yet even among the rich, who would want all those Hardy Boys books cluttering ups their McMansions?  Kids (and adults, but especially kids) go through reading stages. There may be a few "keepers" but it's a feature, not a bug to be able to give books back once you have read them.  It also solves the problem of books you liked too well to simply toss but will probably never read again. 

   Another library solution to the problem of book clutter, of course, is to host periodic book collection and book sales events.  It's a mistake to think of book sales as simply library fund raising.  They are actually an essential public service for many library patrons.