Observations
Student groups in the core organization class explored how a large bookstore and a large public library handle an assigned topical area (e.g., sports, handicrafts, cookery). Each group made a report, and then each student commented on other reports. I enjoyed this comment, and it shows why I use this assignment. The student is Stephen Stose, and the name of the library has been removed.
------------ comment by Stephen:
Yes, I also enjoyed reading the distinction between precision browsing and precision searching. I have always thought that libraries should become, nevertheless, more "browsable" and bookstores more "searchable". …. Libraries should guard the silence, but not at the expense of user experience. This may be to suggest that librarians need to relax a bit, open up a coffee shop inside (not Starbucks, please), and use their lobby as public space (if it is, where is the public?), not as space observed by the panoptican desk of the shhshing librarian (how I felt in XXX PL, waiting). Here we have it: the "public" turned "private". I suppose, bookstores, on the other hand, require the opposite extreme. Here we have the "private" turned overwhelmingly "public", almost as if there is nothing else to do in Boston these days other than browse a bookstore-coffee shop with one's kids and friends, as a way to spend the day. It is a nice way to spend the afternoon, but often today it seems done, let me suggest, in the name of "style", which bookstores seem happy to promote. A noisy bookstore on Saturday morning, making lots of money at the same time; it is the new public space, and few people consider spending the same day at the public library, perhaps due to the constrictions these old "public" dinosaurs place on the public. Indeed, after my experience in XXX PL, I also would prefer the Harvard Bookstore or Coop, where there is at least life. And if I really was interested in precise searching, I probably would go to the much larger BPL downtown. The conclusion, libraries need to adapt to the public spirit a bit more, open their doors, let their hair down, and serve wine and coffee where artists and intellectuals and families can feel comfortable "being" and also browsing. Few families really are interested in precise searching, and the intellectuals and artists at the bookstores, really, could use a bit more of that.