Dysfunctional and Codependent

There is a dysfunctional and codependent relationship going on in libraryland. (No! Not ebooks!) I’m looking at you, print books! We’ve shacked up with print books for so long, everybody thinks it’s a common law marriage. And still we won’t admit that this is a “books who hate librarians and the librarians who love them” relationship. Denial.

Let’s look at this crazy relationship:

First of all, our lover turns out to be a hoarder. A&E show got nothing on this loony. Did you ever think maybe there are enough books? How about throwing something way? It’s bad enough that the collection grows like a cancer with what you’ve forced us to buy, but then you get your lunatic relatives to call us up as well: “I’ve got a garage full of textbooks on accounting from the 1950s and 60s. I’d like the library to have them.” Uh uh, Jack. Then, the whole family is trying to lay a guilt trip on anybody who suggests that something has to go. OMG! What about the cultural record!

Secondly, what we do have won’t stand up to a good reading. Oh, sure, try to preserve this stuff that starts falling apart after 3 uses. I think HarperCollins was being generous with 26! No chance replacing it because the stupid thing has gone out of print. OUT OF PRINT! What the hell is that? You end up borrowing another copy and tipping in a bunch of tacky looking photocopied pages. Hey book! Why don’t you just send all your pages in a box?

Then there’s the lack of standard format. Try organizing a library with all the wildly different sizes that Mr. Print Book comes in. Sometimes we end up with the “over there in the BIG area for no good reason” collection. Don’t even talk to me about those 6-foot tall book nutcases. Sometimes we just say, “screw it!” and cram stuff on the shelf any which way…fore edge down–ripping the cover right off at the spine. Whatever. Who cares? We have not even addressed the question of language. It’s like everybody has a different word for EVERYTHING! How are we supposed to be able to read all this stuff? Some books are even right to left. Back to front.

Here’s a good one. You’ve spent $700 on book and then he says, 9 months later, “there’s a new edition. Everything in the old edition is out of date.” Here’s the thing though. You checked. There are a total of 11 word changes and 7 punctuation changes. RIIIIGHT. New edition. $900 this time. This has a variation too: something that looks like a new book altogether, different title, different ISBN, different author even…turns out to be EXACTLY like a book you already have. Word for word.

But with all these crazy rantings, don’t even dare bring up separation. He starts screaming and wailing. “No, baby. Please. Don’t leave me! I’ll be better. I promise.” But it’s just the same old story over and over again. Whole bloody family ought to go in for therapy. That’s all I’m saying. Or maybe it’s time to think about saving yourself. Get out of this relationship altogether. He’s never going to change.

[Oh lord! Have I become like THAT library columnist?]

 



3 Comments on “Dysfunctional and Codependent”

  1. There are about 50 other crazinesses I didn’t even talk about. Tell me about your experiences.

  2. […] Are we better off with ebooks or without them? Librarian in Black thinks we should break up with ebooks, because they are a bad boyfriend: “Libraries and eBooks aren’t shacking up anytime soon, not for real…not as long as publishers continue to falsely view us as a threat instead of a partner.” In contrast, Steven Harris argues that our relationship with print books is just as dysfunctional and codependent. […]

  3. Martin says:

    Somebody try to show me a book more technologically perfect that the printed book.
    I tried e-readers: a pain, limited, no art design (love dust jackets), difficult to retrieved, expensive, fragile, blah blah blah.
    I go to the library, check the catalog, go to the shelf, grab the book and voila!
    Ebooks are already obsolete!


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