18 Miles of Books

A few mornings ago, I was talking on the phone with a friend and planning an initial excursion into New York City. I've been in Newark for more than a month now, and I decided that it was about time that I went into the City and loafed around for a while. My friend mentioned the Strand: "I see people in D.C. all the time who have Strand tote bags. 16 miles of books! It sounds like your sort of place."

"I thought it was 15 miles of books."

"I'm pretty sure," she said, "that it's 16 miles."

Well, we were both wrong: the Strand has been--and is still--expanding. It's a bookstore I've wanted to go to for a few years; I still can't forgive myself for missing City Lights when I was in San Fran a few years back, and the Strand bags I've seen on-campus at Susquehanna and Bucknell were walking advertisements for this bookstore. When I arrived at the Strand's location, 828 Broadway, near Union Square, I immediately noticed that the number on the Strand's awning, which announces the miles of books in a white sans serif font, offered the verdict on the collection: 18 miles.

Notably, the "8" was slightly translucent and almost masked a "6." I couldn't see if there was another layer underneath that, the possibility of the "6" disguising a "5."

In a time when a lot of bookstores are experiencing troubles and either closing down or catering to electronic market, the Strand stands a testament to the existence of book lovers everywhere. It's more than a tourist attraction: it's four floors of books, containing titles from university presses, indie presses, and mainstream publishers alike. And the Strand handles used and collectible books, as well.

One search I always perform in bookstores is the quick glance for books by my past instructors. The short version: successful on all counts, even academic monographs.

It's difficult to amble through the Strand--the shelves are stacked and leave only narrow walkways between them. There was a girl nestled against the shelves in one of the fiction aisles, and I had the somewhat awkward experience of towering over her on a stepladder as she swaddled herself with a scarf and, cramped in her corner, continued to read despite the hordes kindly elbowing each other for access to the stacks.

But this girl and I were the oddballs in that we were exploring the Strand alone; most of the patrons were accompanied by a friend, a lover, a partner, with whom they investigated the many stacks.

Books may not always be the dominant media for reading. I certainly have no problem with the e-reader revolution (Moby Dick or Ulysses on the Kindle, for instance, is infinitely more portable than their ink-and-paper counterparts), but we still live in the cult of the book: a society in which a tote bag becomes a universal advertisement as easily recognizable as a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. And there's something about the physical object itself that unites people--as friends, as readers.

The Future of the Library

Recently, Will Gompertz, author of the BBC blog Gomp/arts, wrote a piece on the future of the local library. It's an interesting piece that discusses the range of borrowing possibilities from grocery store checkout lines to the local pub. The central crux of Gompertz's post is, "How do we keep the lending library relevant?"

The answer, perhaps, lies in digital lending. Okay, maybe it seems daft, but here's my thought: There are e-readers out to wazoo, the iPad, the iPod, [not-so]smartphones, and several dozen other ways to read something electronically. Many of these devices are equipped with wifi capability or attached to a 3G wireless network. (In the instance of the Amazon Kindle, the Sprint wifi doesn't even cost anything--as opposed to the AT&T package offered with Apple's iPad, aka the iPod that toked up on technology growth hormone.)

The idea sparked after I was checking out textbooks for a course I'm teaching and noticed that Barnes&Noble now offers a "rent" option on textbooks. For a fee that's less than the cost of a used book, you can borrow a book for the duration of the term and then return it to the store. Then I got my NetFlix in the mail, and...

Well, here's the story: digital lending should be perfectly possible. A "NetFlix" for books would no doubt be too costly, unless rented items were shipped media mail, but the variety of e-readers should, in theory, offer readers great possibilities. Think of it like The New York Times subscription you can get for your Kindle, but instead for your local library. You pay the library an acceptable amount, and you get a one-year subscription (perhaps through Amazon or B&N or Apple, depending upon your library's e-reader preference) to electronic rentals. You can download books that you've "rented," then "send" them back.

I'm no tech whiz, and I'm aware that the idea is fraught with difficulties--precisely because of the broad scope of the e-reader market and other compatibility issues--but it may allow the library to continue bringing in some monetary resources while still protecting knowledge. It pays libraries, who in turn pay our librarians, who in turn are making sure that libraries continue to function and collect knowledge, entertainment, and all that. Something to think about.