Your public library is closing shortly. What did you check out?

[Robert Zwilling]

Our library opened the book drop last week for all the checked out books. This week they opened up sidewalk service. Make an online reservation for a book, cd, or dvd, then drive up on the sidewalk and someone will run alongside the car and toss your order inside an open window.

I wonder if some enterprising person will make a video of everything on the shelves so a person could go back to browsing instead of searching. Searching relies on the searcher knowing something in advance. Too many times I have not found something because my search parameters were either too general or too specific. Science fiction stories with spaceships, 2,000 results listed, as everything under the sun, including dvds, newspaper and internet articles, are included in the search results.

Reminds me of the time, many years ago, when the local phone company first went into competition with the cable company. For the telephone company's video on demand service, you selected a movie from a list on your TV screen, then your selection showed up on the screen at the telephone company where a rep would read the title, run over to the dvd library, find the title, pop the dvd into a disk drive and send the playback out to the specified cable box. The service was nicknamed SneakerNet.

 

[Mad Alice]

Our city council was making noises about the library service the day before so I went in to the one branch one town over that was open that next day and got all my holds from their system there, as well as about twenty assorted other books to add to the ones I had already (a high stack). So to keep me company I had four new fantasy novels and two magical realism two science fiction, two books of sheet music and one about technique for each of the two instruments I have with me. One about exercise for recovery, one about calculus, higher physics, organic chemistry including crystalline structures like viruses, math games, local birds, poetry, gardening, astronomy. Several books that are beautifully illustrated and full of photos to paint from, including seasons of the horse, flowers from within, mammals of the Northern hemisphere, Big Cats, Birdhouses how to build them and the birds that nest there. The kitchen diaries, tourist guides to Athens, corfu, .Malta, and Brazil, animal safaris of Africa, 100 odd things about Paris, fairytale knitted animal patterns, and painting and drawing books. Watercolour and acrylic technique, drawing and painting textures, paint techniques of the old masters, how to draw everything around you, realism with pastels, capturing expression. Preserving pint by pint, how to hygge. And some history books.
I wasn't the only one that had gone over. All the folks I usually met from the surrounding towns at the big community center in that town were there, picking up books and movies and doing a full shop, and they were all talking about staying in until the worst was over. Following their advice I did a little shopping for odds and sods I normally pickup as I need them.
This load actually broke both my book bag and my backpack but I got it all the whole six km back to home.
That night all the library closed for the duration with no notice given, not even to staff. They were talking about being open the next week.
@HareBrain I actually didn't have the correct library card but I did have a book I had checked out and they pulled my information off that. They looked it up online for me. Sometimes if you ask they can do something.

 

[Jondo_]

I was actually coming home from school when things started to go into effect and I'd just checked out a bunch of books (planning to skim them) for a research project.
I now know ... them all ... so well.