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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Francisco with no less than 31 different neighborhood branches? The system of borrowing a book from the shelf of a musty public institution has been familiar to me since my childhood days in Germany. In San Francisco, I had not managed to obtain a library card in over twenty years, but now that I have some breathing room, I thought: let's try it out.
So I went to a branch of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) in our neighborhood on Jersey Street, showed my driver's license and said "What's a guy gotta do around here to get a library card?" or something similar, anyway I wanted to imitate Kramer from Seinfeld as much as possible. The lady behind the counter entered my data into the computer, confirmed that my address was in San Francisco and asked me what motif i wanted on my future four-year, free library card. Portraits of any left-wing political heroes maybe? I decided to go with the cute cat motif (Picture 2).
In an impromptu briefing, I learned that the loan period for books is three weeks and one can extend it five times (if no other bookworm has reserved the book with a so-called "Hold"). Also, the maximum number of books that a person can borrow at the same time surprised me: up to 100 books! I presume you'd have to bring your own wheel barrel or shopping cart in this case. Books can be returned at in any (!) branch, either by placing them on the librarian's table or by dropping them into the mailbox downstairs.
Most of the books in the branch are outdated snores, not even classic American novelists, rather like the grab bag of the bookstore. An exception is the shelf labeled "Lucky Day," where new releases from major publishing houses are on display. There one can find (with luck) biographies about Elon Musk, or that quack book by Prince Harry, or even the latest New York Times bestsellers like "Chip Wars." However, one cannot extend the loan period of these sought-after books.
I have already borrowed myself a few copies and was very satisfied. Books that you can of course buy for $20, but a man like me has to count the pennies! Moreover, it forces one to adhere to the deadline, I'm not a fast reader and a book with 300 pages in three weeks time is already quite a stretch for me.
There's also a DVD rack, but who watches DVDs these days? And of course, even the ole city public library has embraced progress with digital books. Highly recommended! With the "Libby" app on your smartphone, you can choose your library and download a book that the library can lend a limited number of copies. Then swoosh and tap, and the book will appear in Amazon's Kindle universe 5, where you can read it with any Kindle reader. For three weeks.
After the three-week deadline, Libby and then Amazon will take back the eBook (Figure 6)! You have to imagine this: To adhere to the old concept of publishers from long ago that finance the production of a book through sold copies, the library must wrestle the digital copy from the reader who may not even be finished with it yet, so that too many copies are in circulation! I once had to press the emergency shutdown button on the network to be able to read the last pages of a book in peace. We live in strange times.
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