More Library Ranting!
I remember in the nineties the state of Illinois had a system, Illinet Online, through which I could browse the libraries of the entire state of Illinois side-by-side with my own library's database. If I found a book I wanted, I put in a request, and soon, free of charge, the book would arrive at my library.
It is now 2007, and London is nowhere near where the entire state of Illinois was back then. There is not even a single search engine for all of the London libraries -- the system is divided into over thirty different regions, each with its own database. My region, Southwark, allows me to do interlibrary loan only within Southwark libraries, and at a cost of £0.50 per book. (The Southwark area does not have a copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicles.)
I've spent most of my life in a place where I took for granted that I could easily get access pretty much any book I wanted for free. I didn't realize how wonderful that was until it was gone.
The good news is that this problem will hopefully become irrelevant for journal articles. Yesterday, I needed a paper by an Italian researcher that was published in Statistica Applicata, a journal that the LSE library doesn't have. But I was able to find the professor's website, take a guess at what "published work" might be in Italian, and find a pdf of the article I needed.
3 Comments:
Don't forget that you're now missing out on the "Library!" in back here in Boise -- come on, you know you miss that exclamation point.
That exclamation point is one of the many things I miss about Boise. I don't remember using that library much. I think I tended to just buy the books I wanted to read from that old used book store in Hyde Park.
I'm really looking forward to the part of my life where I can finally have all my books with me where I live.
The day after I moved to DC, the Georgetown Library (just down the street from my house) burned down. I have chosen not to dwell on the possibly implications fate my have been attempting to convey. All I know is, I haven't been to a library (or Library!) here yet.
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