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Today is going to be all kinds of busy. I've been getting some actual wordcount in lately, so I need to spend today focusing on the language translation and study that I've been neglected in favor of writing banter between Elf & Dragon (Plus Occasional Disenchanter). I need to hit the library and the climbing gym, figure out what to make for dinner, buy things for that and make it, and then tonight I'm off with friends to see Labyrinth in the park, with a Bowie cover band going beforehand. Which should be pretty awesome.
Anyway. Apropos of none of that, I wanted to take a moment to note just how great the Austin library system is. I was spoiled a bit by having truly excellent school libraries while growing up--the one at the Alliance Academy served as the library with English books in it for pretty much the entire missionary community in Quito, plus a lot of other English-speaking folks who weren't missionaries, so it was larger than it might've been otherwise--so it took me a while to learn to appreciate city libraries. Especially when I then ended up comparing them to college libraries, which were so much larger, would get me books from a huge network of other libraries on request, and stayed open for so much longer hours...
But the Austin library is really very good. Lots of locations. A good website, which was recently updated to have a much better search engine, easier navigation, better user account management, and some mild optional social stuff for rating/reviewing/listing books. And any branch of the library will get me books from any other branch, and send me an email when those holds have arrived. Then another email if the hold is going to expire soon, if I haven't picked them up yet. It's awfully handy, and what books I want that I can't find through the library are usually either academic texts (which I can get through the university library anyway) or relatively old/obscure. They can't carry anything, but they do a good job.
And I especially want to make a note of how they handle comics and graphic novels and manga. They actually divide those up into three separate sections, rather than lumping everything from Chi's Sweet Home to Maus to Spiderman to Lone Wolf And Cub together in one section. There's a J GRA section (for elementary school kids), YA GRA section (teens), and unmarked GRA section (adults). Given that some of the pictures in the Kurosagi series have given me nightmares, I'm all for some divisions that make sure the seven-year-olds aren't going to be running into the comics aimed at adults, except on purpose.
And, damn, it's a good collection. I tend to browse at the Yarborough branch, which is a medium-sized one at most, and I still keep running into exciting new series, or quirky one-off graphic novels by people I've never heard of. ("People I've never heard of" is no great feat, as I am far from well-versed in the field of sequential art, but I've been to libraries where all graphic novels, if they had any to start with, were from the tiny subset of best-known and most-popular.)
So, you know. It's a good library we've got here in Austin. I'm sure they do very well in a lot of other areas, too. (And I appreciate that they shelve sf&f all together, instead of trying to divide it into two categories, though I am often bemused by what sf&f is arbitrarily put into general fiction instead.) Thought I'd point that out, as I use the place so often.
Anyway. Apropos of none of that, I wanted to take a moment to note just how great the Austin library system is. I was spoiled a bit by having truly excellent school libraries while growing up--the one at the Alliance Academy served as the library with English books in it for pretty much the entire missionary community in Quito, plus a lot of other English-speaking folks who weren't missionaries, so it was larger than it might've been otherwise--so it took me a while to learn to appreciate city libraries. Especially when I then ended up comparing them to college libraries, which were so much larger, would get me books from a huge network of other libraries on request, and stayed open for so much longer hours...
But the Austin library is really very good. Lots of locations. A good website, which was recently updated to have a much better search engine, easier navigation, better user account management, and some mild optional social stuff for rating/reviewing/listing books. And any branch of the library will get me books from any other branch, and send me an email when those holds have arrived. Then another email if the hold is going to expire soon, if I haven't picked them up yet. It's awfully handy, and what books I want that I can't find through the library are usually either academic texts (which I can get through the university library anyway) or relatively old/obscure. They can't carry anything, but they do a good job.
And I especially want to make a note of how they handle comics and graphic novels and manga. They actually divide those up into three separate sections, rather than lumping everything from Chi's Sweet Home to Maus to Spiderman to Lone Wolf And Cub together in one section. There's a J GRA section (for elementary school kids), YA GRA section (teens), and unmarked GRA section (adults). Given that some of the pictures in the Kurosagi series have given me nightmares, I'm all for some divisions that make sure the seven-year-olds aren't going to be running into the comics aimed at adults, except on purpose.
And, damn, it's a good collection. I tend to browse at the Yarborough branch, which is a medium-sized one at most, and I still keep running into exciting new series, or quirky one-off graphic novels by people I've never heard of. ("People I've never heard of" is no great feat, as I am far from well-versed in the field of sequential art, but I've been to libraries where all graphic novels, if they had any to start with, were from the tiny subset of best-known and most-popular.)
So, you know. It's a good library we've got here in Austin. I'm sure they do very well in a lot of other areas, too. (And I appreciate that they shelve sf&f all together, instead of trying to divide it into two categories, though I am often bemused by what sf&f is arbitrarily put into general fiction instead.) Thought I'd point that out, as I use the place so often.