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I once borrowed a book that hadn't been checked out since 1959. Instead of stamping the card, the librarian simply put a barcode on the inside cover and scanned that. I felt a little sad that the history of the book is no longer stamped into it anymore. I felt a sense of connection knowing just how many people had read the same book in the past.
Without naming a place, a friend of mine checked out a copy of the parliamentary proceedings (from the UK) of the House of Lords from the early 19th c. They were the only one to have _ever_ checked any of these books out. Mostly boring, but the HoL could get up to funny stuff when they were bored or irritating each other.
My only gripe was that they highlighted their favorite bits in yellow. I mean — come on! Their counterargument was that, in the year 2150, when the next person checks out the proceedings, they'd know where the good parts were.
That's also why on the bus I turn my music up really loud for the good songs
You've made me wonder if the yellow pigment will remain visible enough in 120 years from now.
As a non-native english speaker this post confuses me a lot, did the HoL highlight their own favourite bits? Was it a group of friends that checked out the proceedings?
Hopefully this will help:
Their friend checked out the proceedings (which are records of what goes on in Parliament, in this case the House of Lords (HoL), the body that legislates above the House of Commons) and then highlighted phrases inside the book they enjoyed (which were passages that were entertaining due to drama).
It's a bit confusing (this is commonly called playing the pronoun game, where pronouns are used without context on what they're referring to), but they mean that their friend is the one highlighting good parts in the book.
I've never heard "the pronoun game" but I know I have a habit of over-writing to avoid it. (Or maybe I'm writing just enough.)
I have had the opposite experience: I once borrowed a more than 100 year old edition of U.S. Grant's autobiography from the university library. There were some pencil notes on the first pages, but I had to cut open the last hundred pages. Apparently, no one has read the book in its entirety in more than a century.
I once bought a used book for a family member for their birthday. It turned out to be an old library book and the card within was stamped with the last date the book was checked out, which was on their birth date, down to even the correct year.
I remember that too. One could infer some useful information from those dates alone. Similarly, it just dawned upon me how useful the dislike counter from youtube was to me, I was drawing some metrics from it that I no longer can. The like counter really has no value without the dislike one IMO.
You’d have to look at like vs view ratios. But I agree, the dislike button made that far easier. Unfortunately, the regime didn’t like the button lol
But the majority of people aren't hitting anything, so now you're lumping in disinterest in ratings with active dislike.
Now you need to determine if you like the video for what it is, instead of relying on the masses to tell you if you dislike the video.
Or, you know, just read the comments.
I was using it to determine of I was being unfair in my critique.
If nobody else is disliking it maybe my biases are effecting my perception.
Not everything is confirmation bias. Some people use social feedback to regulate themselves into not being total weirdos.
I have upvoted your comment, but feel the need to inform you that I am, in fact, a total weirdo. So, take that as you will.
I've "borrowed" books from archive.org that had their last borrower's date in the late 19th/early 20th century, similarly visible from the log affixed inside the cover --- which the archive.org scanners clearly preserved. When I come across such a book I also ponder who the last borrower was.
I agree, I always got a kick out of that. Always interesting to see when someone thought it was interesting enough to check out last.
Many of the books in my library came from used library book sales, especially those I read as a child. When I read them again I always look at the checkout dates and wonder about those people, whether the book had the same impact on their lives it had on mine decades later.
“I don’t think anybody here has seen a book” that’s been away for so long, she said.
Those quotes gave me a laughing fit.
Wow, Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote a lot of books!
https://www.locserendipity.com/TitleSearch.html?q=Kate%20Dou...
(fair warning, this search engine loads the entire index, so uses several MB before it loads—-no worse than a high resolution photo of the moon, but I don’t want to eat someone’s limited mobile data).
I guess once it was available on Project Gutenberg (
https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1375/pg1375-images.html
) they didn’t need the print copy anymore.
I have a book that my advisor lent me. He had checked it out in the 70s as a grad student from his university library. I'd been meaning to return it in person the next time I'm there, but dang COVID had other plans.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/07/school-lib...
Reading this I am a little green with envy about how lucky Americans got (and also a little queasy about how they squandered their luck to be become a failed society but I digress).
My birth country has been ravaged by two world wars and then the brief but devastating stalinist era was not kind either. The chances of a random library being open since 1911 is basically nil.
Apparently I am in the same league as I returned a book 21 years later. I was an avid book reader and I used to read tons of books from my hometown public library. Then when I started Uni in another town I was home only in week-ends and I switched to technical books to take from said library. Apparently one of those got lost in my personal books when I moved and stayed at the bottom of a box for those 21 years. Meanwhile I got a wife, kids, you know, life happened.
So a few years ago (~2017) we moved again and this time I decided I have too much crap in some boxes and wanted to do a cleanup, therefore I took personally by hand each box in my garage. Lo and behold, at the bottom I recognized this book from the library and when I visited my mother in one of usual monthly visits I also took the book back with me.
Funny enough, the same librarian lady was still there as last time I saw her when I was a student, very near to her retirement. I explained the situation and apologized, returned the book and she laughed off. No late fees, though the said library does still had late fees and would've been quite the sum (a little bit more than my monthly salary). The book in question was an electronics catalog dating from middle of 90's, mainly about diodes and thyristors.
Nice to see my home state/town making cute national news for a change (as opposed to our usual cringe-worthy coverage).
Oh gosh, I wonder what the literal and naive fine would have been.
I too would have returned in anonymously.
They mention the fine based on when the book was checked out would be over $800, but under current rules would be capped at price of acquisition of the book or $1.50.
Actually the article says late fees were eliminated entirely in 2019. I wonder if news surrounding that factored into the book being returned, or if it was just coincidence.
That's a somewhat naïvely correct cap, seems to me it should be higher, to impose a bit of a penalty and discourage 'try before you buy'. Also is that acquisition cost the same as it is to the borrower anyway?
I assume the price is not inflation adjusted?
Both are the current amount they would pay based on the late fee systems. So no?
None, because the borrower has almost certainly been dead for a long time.
Will it now be named "The Old Chronicles of Rebecca"?