Traditions

I watched the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving. It is a long-standing tradition going back as far as I can remember. For me, the tradition includes getting the pumpkin pie into the oven just as the Rockettes do their number (ushering in the start of the Parade) and sitting with family kibitzing about who the singers are, how well they lip-sync, what balloon is losing air, will Bob McGrath still be on the Sesame Street Float this year (sadly, no), how cold the marching band members from some warm state are (I have noticed the band from Hawaii never returned). While I keep this tradition going, it isn’t quite the same anymore, now that my family is far-flung and isn’t ‘home for the holidays’. This year, I ended up kibitzing via text to my daughter who was at work and only responded during her break.

Shop Local Saturday is our newest tradition, which finds us visiting a number of local businesses. One in particular we look forward to since it is a great little shop filled with just the right gifts for family and friends. So we set out with enthusiasm, only to discover it had moved to a larger site and is now much expanded (very nice location). We wandered around like lost souls, this year walking out with nothing, missing the intimacy and selection of the prior location.
Finishing off the weekend was a holiday film about giving up old traditions and moving on to new experiences. It seemed like I was being told something at this point!

I was surprised to be reminded how important traditions are to me, considering how I love and embrace change (have you been to the library recently?). But traditions do give you a sense of stability and surety in a world that seems to be radically different almost every day. It binds people together with a shared experience that everyone knows and fits back into comfortably and comfortingly. The risk arises when tradition prevents positive progress, when the tradition continues to lumber on having long outlasted its function and prevents the development of new traditions.

Libraries are often tagged with the traditional label – too often in a negative sense. But in reality, libraries just do the shift to new traditions well, building on what works and easing away what no longer is the best solution today. Sure, there are always changes that seem jarring – and these are the ones that strike closest to your comfort zone – but that passes as well. Libraries are thought of as being traditional places, but if you sit and consider the library of your childhood and today’s library, you will be startled be the differences that have eased in while keeping the sense of comforting traditions.

Movie: Fiddler on the Roof
Book: The Book of New Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays and Everyday, by Cox, Meg.

Consumer or creator

           So, I was reading after lunch over the weekend, and my husband turned on one of his go-to TV shows "Love it or List it". Suddenly I thought: that narrator is the same one that reads Janet Evanovich's Plum series. I recognized it because her reading is the reason I stopped listening to the series (I have talked about audiobook readers previously), having liked the original reader much better. The newer reader's voice was too patterned, in a way that made me think about the reader's voice instead of visualizing the rich milieu of Stephanie Plum's life. And that is terrible - I prefer to get lost in the book, imagining the lives and locations being detailed on the pages. And I get lost - I was rereading the Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder one summer night. If you haven't read it, it is all about a long, extremely snowy winter. So my desperate dog finally got my attention and I got up to let her outside. I was so completely lost in the book that I was totally shocked there was no snow and it was warm outside.
           I had also just been following a discussion online about whether reading is a consuming process or a creating process. A director in a big midwest city library had been quoted identifying readers as consuming - and certainly one could argue that a reader is taking in what is written, not creating it. But some participants in the discussion believed that reading creates something in your mind. After all, two people can read the same book, the same descriptions of people and places and have radically different ideas of what it looks like. Why else would there be any argument when a book is filmed as to the choices of actors. One poster's comments are particularly evocative: "I know that as I recently reread C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, I discovered that much of the rich world I remember from reading those books as a child is actually not detailed in the books. Lewis's writing and my own imagination interacted to create the world I remembered. An individual's ability to imagine something that doesn't exist is the basis for innovation". Consider that and then think of the Narnia movies, where you are watching, or consuming, someone else's vision created when they read the book.
           So I guess my opinion is clear - what do you think? Hmm, so opinions are created by reading as well . . .

What is Happening to Dewey?

You may have noticed changes in the stacks recently. In some areas, old familiar Dewey is completely missing. Where is it going? It is being replaced with Natural Language Classifying (Natlac for short), something we have kind of invented. Basically it is translating the number system into the words that the numbers represent. It is a relative of the more familiar BISAC system used in libraries and bookstores, but a new twist.

So why bother? Well, Dewey is a terrific classification system - a hundred years ago. But times change, and Dewey doesn't like change. People want a book on cooking, or computers, or traveling to Rome - so why not make it possible to just find all the books labeled cooking, computers, traveling to Rome? Why confuse with those mysterious decimals that are really disguised fractions - and we all had trouble with fractions! Natlac is easier and much more intuitive.

Also, the structure of Dewey separates books that really are more useful side-by-side. Why should garden design be somewhere in the 700's and gardening in the 600's? Why should Photoshop manuals be way down in the 000's and photography is up in the 700's? We couldn't come up with a good reason why, and decided to make the change - and so Natlac was born.

Right now we are about 1/3 of the way through, and picking up speed fast. Hopefully by mid-2014 we will be all done with the relabeling and can move on to rearranging. Yes more change, but the final step. When we are done rearranging, even broadly related books will all be together in a neighborhood. Travel books will be right next to language books - isn't that most of the reason to learn a language? All the various and sundry hobbies, crafts, etc. will all be together, and then right next to sports and recreation - after all, aren't these all resources for finding and enhancing enjoyable pastimes?

So give us a little more time, and I think you will be really delighted at the outcome. And if you are confused at the moment - just ask one of us. We are ready as always to take you right to the book you want.