Notes from the Libraries' Media Departments

I have long been a passionate patron of library sales. They can be spectacular, those treasure houses in  Westport, Katonah, Wilton and Southport’s massive days-long Pequot Library sale. I’ve attended these for decades and can remember where I found some of my favorite buys. I scooped up books in Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, and a gigantic coffee-table-covering novelty, Leslie's Official History of the Spanish-American War from 1899.  

In recent weeks I’ve enjoyed the twice-weekly sale right here at our own Katonah Village Library. My full attention goes to the CD sales racks. Ever since I got a Victrola multimedia player on my last birthday, I can finally play CDs, vinyl and cassettes all day long, and I do. The library sale and the price of 10 CDs for $4 freed my inner consumer, so I now have relieved the library of at least 25 CDs, mostly Latin, jazz (lots of Bill Evans and Nat King Cole), some Israeli, plus CDs by the Grateful Dead, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and Confederate Railroad. Confederate Railroad—now there’s a transgressive band name that sounded a little jarring for Katonah.

  

I’m happy to do my bit to support the library. It’s in a financial squeeze, so buying CDs helps keep the lights on. Still, I’m unsettled to think that all these CDs are for sale because nobody’s checking them out any more. They’re just taking up space. This shows how libraries are a prime signal of technological and social change. Online listening has become so prevalent that libraries are ditching CDs, a trend that goes back to the late 1990s with Napster and kept on going. With budgets pinched, libraries put the money where it brings patrons in. and if nobody’s grooving on the Grateful Dead or the New Riders of the Purple Sage except us senior citizens, they are shifting the resources to something else.

I wonder, though, about the long-term trends. Will users’ preference for everything digital ultimately make libraries become a nonprofit model of the retail experience, where you go to stores to sample and shop, then buy online? 

Fruits of the hunt for cool tunes. 

Fortunately, the Katonah library still stocks DVDs. Getting movies at libraries seems common now, but at one time there was a huge legal question about whether libraries could loan out movies, at the time in the VHS format. I worked for Video Store, a video retailing magazine from 1987 to 1995 and followed the issue. Ultimately, libraries could loan out movies, first in VHS, now DVD. As the video retailing industry collapsed (remember Blockbuster?) libraries became the last man standing in video retail. And truth be told, you get more variety from a multi-branch library system like Westchester County than streaming services. That’s especially true with my favorite genres, like film noir and foreign movies. Some of the greatest films I’ve ever seen came from libraries—Daughter of Kheltoum, set in Algeria, Alexandra, a Russian movie set in Chechnya and film noir like Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum. The Westport, Connecticut library even stocked the Swedish film I am Curious (Yellow), which was seized by the U.S. Customs Service, banned in Boston and the winner of major First Amendment lawsuits. From banned in Boston to available in the public library, that's social change in action.

Libraries also became a necessity for me in keeping up with cultural trends. In years past I had a low level of cable TV service, sticking to basic cable, so I didn’t get Mad Men on AMC, much less The Sopranos on HBO. As a result, I could only find them at the Westport library, waiting YEARS after episodes appeared on TV for seasons to finally reach libraries in DVD sets. In these days of instant streaming and availability of everything, it must sound bizarre to wait until the library gets DVDs of these series, but I’m a patient man and I waited.

So call me old-fashioned, but I’ll be going to the Katonah and other libraries as long as they’re around. I like flipping through newspapers and magazines that I can hold more than I want to read them online. I like checking out armloads of CDs if I can find some I really want. What’s the next tech or social lurch to be reflected in libraries? Your guess is as good as mine, but they’ll keep coming. And please— support your local library! Make a donation and buy up books, DVDs and CDs that catch your fancy. Let me know if you find any Latin or Brazilian CDs and maybe I'll buy them from you.