To delight the inner bookworm, learn how to get your next amazing read into your fabulous local library, including tonnes of fun random library facts. Book out some time for yourself and let’s hit the stacks…
What is a library
A library is simply a room containing a collection of books or print items such as magazines and papers.
You can find a library in public domains within the community. A private house library can be a collection of books kept within a room.
The library concept began with clay tablets stored in the temple rooms in Sumer 2600 BC. Imagine checking out one of those books. Oh, and what would be the fine if you dropped it or chipped the edge?
A library collection is one section, such as 5 books in a rural romance genre.
The word library comes from the Latin work Liber meaning ‘Book’.
The types of libraries
To not be all hush-hush among the catalogues but we can break it down to 5 library types.
Academic library—the university and school libraries.
Special Library—where binding books are kept for the professionals only, such as law documents and health research papers.
Public Library—is a public-funded (government tax money) local library that anyone can access.
National Library—this is the government keepsakes library of national treasures, it’s the valuable stuff that’s considered Library porn.
Private Library—home collections that offer many fabulous shelfie opportunities for the Bookstagrammers.
How libraries work
For your local library, you need to join up. You’ll get a membership number that is known as the cutest card in the catalogues to book out a book—the library card.
You flash your library card to book out your book. Read it by the deadline date (usually 4 weeks), then return it and get a new one. Easy as.
Library memberships are generally free.
Food and drink may be allowed, but no milk over the serials! Ha.
Late fees may occur when you don’t return your book in time. And if you’re like me, I’m always pageing for an extension! Sorry, can’t help my shelf.
The E-book Library
To go beyond the shelf, E-books exploded, especially during Covid, when bookshops were closed and library times became restricted. The librarians, like superheroes, jumped beyond the black and white world of words and taught countless people how to access the E-book library. Librarians are so lit!
My local library uses Borrow Box for E-book Library services.
Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited E-book library is like Netflix for books, in a library where you pay a minimal fee per month and have access to millions of books. Check out the FREE TRIAL here.
Audiobooks are also available through this same avenue.
There are literary gazillions of online libraries out there so check with your local librarian to discover what they use. Or join one like Amazon or KOBO to feed your book fetish.
Some random library facts:
Because I asked for you and went down the rabbit hole of research, here are some completely random facts all about the library:
The first library
Is the Library of Ashurbanipal founded in the 7th century B.C. in Iraq.
The first public library
Considered a debatable topic by many who claim the Peterborough Town Library in New Hampshire has this title.
Today’s oldest library
Is the Al-Qarawiyyin library in Morocco.
The world’s most beautiful library
Dependent upon what flips your pages in personal taste, but the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, Switzerland is just gorgeous!
The world’s biggest library
The British library boasts it has 200 million books in its catalogue.
The country with the most public libraries
Is China closely followed by Russia, then India.
The world’s best library, also known as the world’s most prestigious library
The library of Congress in Washington D.C that claims to have over 170 million books on hand.
The world’s most famous library
The New York Public Library, New York, receives over 18 million visitors per year and a regular backdrop in movies (see below).
The world’s most mythical library
Considered the marvel of the modern world was The Great Library of Alexandrie, Egypt—burned by Caeser in 48BC.
The world’s most checked out library book
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, had 485,583 checkouts, followed by Dr Suess’s The Cat in the Hat with 469,650 checkouts.
The world’s smallest library
Being so small many contenders have claimed this category, so we started a collection of the world’s smallest libraries:
The phone booth library in the UK is a library in a phone box. For those who don’t remember what a phone box is, it’s where Superman used to get changed in.
The Babino library, Macedonia, has all twelve of its town residents claiming that their library (once a private collection) is the smallest library.
On Prince Edward Island, Canada, the Cardigan Library is aiming for the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s smallest library. It’s currently offering lifetime membership for $5.
The mailbox library in Hudson, Wisconsin with over 25,000 mailboxes as their library branches, those mailboxes became art within themselves to house these little libraries.
The scariest library and their librarians
Back in the day, and according to current Google searches, people as can they get diseases from books? This was such a huge fear that has been around forever. On record, it was known as the Great Library Death scare of 1895 where people actually believed you could die from library books! For the record, current health practices minimalise this death by pages but do ask your librarian for confirmation, that’s if your librarian isn’t scary…
If you love your superstitions and watched Ghostbusters, then you’ll remember the iconic scary librarian. But that story had to come from somewhere, right?
Libraries all over have claims to ghosts hanging around, and the scariest library in the world that goes bump is…
The Kimberley Africana Library (Kimberley, South Africa) ghost is their first librarian who roams the shelves. The story goes, he drank some arsenic after they’d discovered this librarian had been doctoring the books and died in-house. Today you can reserve a spot on a ghost tour where you can catch this librarian lurking in the library halls, scaring visitors by tossing books and rattling the teacups.
And then there’s the scary State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)…
This down under library receives more visitors than the US Library of Congress.
It’s home to Ned Kelly’s Armour.
It was also one of the first public libraries in the world.
But it is also home to over 20 ghosts! Its most famous ghost is the librarian, Grace, who likes to keep an eye on things in the children’s section.
The best Off-The Page Library moments in Movies and TV:
Putting those library puns on hold… Here are some big off-the-page library moments you can find on the small screen.
Ghostbusters
The original 1984 classic has an impressive scene with a scary librarian in the New York Public Library.
National Treasure
Is a namedropping US history lesson with an adventurous Nicolas Cage who can really pull off a tux.
Legally Blonde
Where our heroine studies for her entrance into Harvard Law, then there are the many academic private libraries she’s seen looking absolutely fabulous in!
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The scene where they find the catacombs via an X that marks the spot! I’m serious.
The Hogwarts Library
This is where Hermione Granger digs up the magical dirt between the pages.
The Breakfast Club.
An amazing movie about a group of teens who are forced to spend their day of detention in a library. Haven’t watched it?
Where have you been! That’s detention for you, my friend, so go and grab some popcorn and slap on the movie. You’re welcome.
Breakfast at Tiffanys
It’s where the love is spilled over some open pages at the New York Public Library.
The Day After Tomorrow
Is a movie where people hide in the library and burn the tax laws to survive. Again this is filmed in the New York Public Library.
Sex and the City
Earlier in the series, we have Carrie getting an iconic kiss on the front steps by an ex-boyfriend at the library. But at the same library, years later, the most famous scene is where Big does the iconic no-show in Carrie’s wedding that was held at the New York Public Library.
The Mummy
We meet the hapless librarian sent on a fabulous adventure after she almost destroys her own library.
The Librarian
Is an upbeat movie that is a family favourite that extended into a series. It’s all about librarians gathering magical artifacts for a very special library.
Beauty and the Beast
According to my niece, the Beast has the best library in cartoon land and the monster’s run amok in their Monsters University.
Buffy the Vampire
Who can forget Sunnydale’s High School Library?
Atonement
For an incredibly hot library scene, do watch.
Game of Thrones
We see the impressive Citadel that went on forever.
Beautiful Creatures
Has a massive magical library beneath the small-town library.
The Supernatural library collections
They have three libraries in this long-running series. Their go-to collection on ghouls was held in a house by their friend Bobby. They then graduated to the endless resource library created by the First Men. And we end up also seeing Death’s library, where the character’s life story is kept on the shelves… What can I say, I’m a fan of the series.
Where the library is the literary theme in the books to read:
What a title, confused? I’m stretching the spines to uncover books with a library theme in them. You can find an entire catalogue of books in Goodreads, so I’ll only include what I’ve read and recommend.
📚 The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. For a fabulous feel-good read that started this article do give this one a try.
📚 The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes. I flipped the covers on this tale about the extraordinary lengths the librarians go through during the depression.
📚 The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is on my TB list. Have you read this one?
📚 The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneggers is the adventures of the time-travelling librarian Henry. I’m too scared to watch the movie in case it ruins it for me as I loved this book.
📚 The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman where collecting books is fast, time-travelling, dangerous fun! So good.
📚 Matilda, a Roald Dahl classic of the child genius who lives for books, its a family favourite.
📚 And as the honourable mention, only because I was looking at my home library, goes to another feel-good story, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
How your local library can help everyone, mostly YOU!
Shoving all fiction aside, the building with the most stories in it is your local library. Poor puns, I know. But this also means that your local library is a great place to interact with other members of your community.
Most libraries have free Wi-Fi to soak up while hanging out among the many other book jackets while avoiding the weather.
Libraries are funded with taxpayer dollars, so they are there for YOU to read and to discover new authors. (Ahem. *clears throat.)
Over time, libraries have evolved to become that great place to just hang out. There’s storytime for the little ones, the book clubs, and community courses, as well as a vast collection of movies and magazines too, making the library the place where the Shhh does not happen.
Getting the books you want in your public library:
As I am a regular user of our tiny (not the world’s tiniest) library, I annoyed my amazing librarian with the question, ‘How do I get books I want to read into the library?’
With today’s chaotic world, many readers can’t afford to buy books, I get it. I do. We’ve got bills to pay, and books were considered a luxury item – which is why libraries came to be in the first place, so we could access the magic of a wonderful story.
So, all you have to do is ask your librarian which book you want and 9/10 they’ll order it in for you, it’s that simple.
Want to read my books in your local library:
All you do is visit your local library, call, or email them and request a new book.
The first thing they’ll ask is the book’s title, the author name, and where these books are available.
To make life easier for you, here’s a list of my books that you can either email or print and pass to your librarian so they can order these books for you. Easy as.
Everyone wins if you do this:
Ordering my paperbacks through your local library is a way that we all win. The author (that’d be me) gets paid for doing the best job in the world that is writing those escapes into books for you to read. Oh, and I get to eat.
But it’s not all about me!
The other advantage is the library will buy the books as part of their amazing community service, which in turn keeps their doors open and in business a little longer.
Also, it’s a great excuse to create your own book club by sharing with your friends about the latest book you loved reading, so they can borrow that book, to really bolster that community spirit.
Whichever way you want to flip a cover, may you find many fabulous reads at your local library and with many happy returns…
**All still images relating to this post’s topic are via the talented & fabulous photographers at https://unsplash.com/ Thanks guys.
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