Tuesday, September 11, 2007
On Beauty and Libraries

Last night I visited the London Library, shamefully for the first time. It is a really beautiful building and the writers I spoke to there all raved about its utility and importance. Here's an old photo of its Art Room.

The Art Room, circa 1930

While the publishing industry is rightly involved in debates about our digital future, the economics of retailing or public library funding, it is easy to forget the importance of aesthetics. I am indebted to Nat Torkington of O'Reilly Radar for this librophiliac link to some of the most beautiful rooms in the world. I cannot think that any other human activity (sports, aviation, theatre, art etc) could have created quite so many wonderful rooms as reading has (although I guess opera houses might come a close second). For purely personal reasons, this is my favourite, the Wren Library of Trinity Cambridge.

Wren%20Library%2C%20Trinity%20Small.jpg

But for splendour, how about Melk Abbey Library? And more, so many more.

Melk-Library%20Small.jpg

A few days ago I published some statistics about the proportion of new books sold through independent booksellers in the UK - only 5% of a paperback and 11% of a hardback. Many people have explained these low percentages as being caused by discounted sales through Internet bookshops. I have therefore done some research in Australia where Internet sales represent only 0.4% of the total (compared with 9% for the paperback and 30% for the hardback in my previous example). Even if you allow for people buying from the US or UK Internet sites, the proportion would be very small. These figures reflect sales across hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction and non-fiction (in brackets are my previous numbers, paperback then hardback) - chains 56% (50,50); supermarkets 29% (35,8); Internet 0.4% (9,30); independents 11.5% (5,11); libraries 3% (less than 1 in each case).

I wouldn't claim that these statistics are definitive, hardly anything in publishing is, but they do suggest that picking Internet booksellers as scapegoats for the woes of independent bookselling is ill-founded. It seems that, in the absence of significant Internet bookshops in Australia, customers are buying more books through chain booksellers than in the UK. It's also interesting to note the significantly higher proportion of sales to library suppliers. Perhaps the Australian Government is showing more respect for libraries, books and education than the British bunch. Good on 'em.

#    |  Comments [9]  | 
9/11/2007 8:16:48 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Richard

A quick comment re Australia, have you considered that many of their chain bookshops are actually franchise operations - something unheard of in Blighty.
Clive Keeble
9/11/2007 8:31:16 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
I do know that. I've always thought that might be worth testing in UK too.
richard charkin
9/11/2007 9:16:12 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Religions have also created some very beautiful rooms and buildings.

But you are right- we are disrespectful of aesthetics and it damages us very greatly. Do not be ashamed to take time to think about the buildings in which you do your work, both the inside and the outside of them. It is part of your responsibility.
tim coates
9/11/2007 10:03:19 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Richard,

I couldn't agree more about the aesthetics of a library being important. My vote goes to the Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève in Paris (http://www-bsg.univ-paris1.fr/home.htm), where I used to while away the hours many years ago as a student. I can't recall whether it was the splendour of the building itself or the young French men attracting my attention there at the time that brings back such fond memories, but it really is a magnificent building and well worth a visit (it's just next to the Panthéon).

However, if the purpose of a library is to inspire one to learn, then I think that many children's libraries do the job just as well as the grander examples above. I visited the Hong Kong Public Library last week and thought that the children's floor was one of the most 'wonderful rooms for reading' that I have ever visited. (http://www.hkpl.gov.hk/english/locat_hour/locat_hour_ll/locat_hour_ll_hkir/library_3.html). It made me want to grab a book, sit down and read it there and then. Butterflies, cartoon characters and animal mobiles hung from the ceiling, there was a play area so kids could take their books and sit on the floor if they wished and, most notably, there were actually children reading there. Maybe those youngsters will become the 'librophiliacs' of the future.

Emma
Emma Shercliff
9/11/2007 12:17:39 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Manchester created the first public library in the English-speaking world in 1653: Chetham's Library, where Karl Marx hammered out The Communist Manifesto. Well worth a visit.

The John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester, is home to one of the UK's greatest collections of books, manuscripts and archives and is a fine example of Manchester's rich literary heritage. The library has recently reopened after a period undergoing renovation, and the new visitor's centre is well worth seeing.
J. Mitchell
9/11/2007 2:54:22 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Give me the Wartenweiler/Cullen Library at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.Great colonial paintings of Africa and explorers above you, some old duck brooding over the Cape government blue books in the basement. and you taste South African history:activists,intellectuals,'terrorists' and saboteurs,brave people, cowards,sellouts. Their ghosts and children and friends hover around you.
But for me the greatest library is the Jo'burg Reference in downtown Johannesburg.Order from the catalog and it goes down to the stacks, miles and miles of them traversed by pickers on mopeds and scooters (The stand on one leg and kick with the other type) until someone brings it to your seat just as you give up hope.
There is a wonderful collection of art, very colonial, but now becoming more representative and weird (or am I becoming old-fashioned?)
Courting couples in the quiet area. Why are they usually Indian? Too much chaperoning?
Some old mama come in off the street and sleeping with a bible or something religious on her lap
You have your illuminated manuscripts, we have possibly the most lively chatterbox,come-one-come-all democratic library in the world. And in the quiet areas, the ghosts who formed SA's democracy are still meeting,plotting,dreaming
Do they appreciate there are no longer 'whites only' areas?
Cory
9/12/2007 6:41:44 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
For me this it's Dublin's Trinity College. The first time I visited Trinity College and walked up the stairs to the library it took my breath away. I'd ask to take it as my luxury to that mythical desert Island.
Richard Havers
9/12/2007 7:15:00 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Alain Resnais's "Toute la mémoire du monde", 1956 documentary, has become something like a rallying standard for French books and libraries lovers.

Alain Pierrot
9/12/2007 7:40:34 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Alain- you would not prosper in England where the Minister for Culture has just admonished those who seek the days of libraries with the whiff of 'Mansion Polish' in their atmosphere. She has also derided those who seek to rebuild their forlorn and dismal book collections. She says

'(public) libraries in the 21st century are about more than the printed word, as those who actually use them understand.

I know there are those who long for a return to the smell of Mansion Polish and a tweedy librarian shooshing anyone whose voice rises above a whisper, but that boat has sailed.'

It is hard work encouraging councils to espouse the value of extensive and comprehensive book collections and to spend money buying books in the face of this Ministerial wind

tim coates