Bookless Libraries – Is This Our Future? by Dorothy St. James

Jenn McKinlay: As a librarian, I'm sure it's no surprise that when I heard about a new series called A Beloved Bookroom Mystery series, I was all in!!! Today we are lucky enough to have author Dorothy St. James tell us all about her first in this new series and she offers up a subject of interest to every library lover's heart - the possibility of bookless libraries! (Pause to clutch my pearls here)!

Dorothy St. James: Let me start off by saying I don’t hate technology. I rely on my phone far too much (and I almost never make phone calls). I prefer ebooks because I enjoy reading in bed without having to use my reading glasses. And the ability to stream TV shows (on my schedule) has been a game-changer. I love the digital world!

 

But digital libraries? Shouldn’t libraries be required to have real hold-in-your-hands books?

 

My latest series, the Beloved Bookroom Mysteries, is based on an idea that a small town library modernizes to become a bookless library, much to the horror of the librarians who work there. The series plays on the theme of technology clashing with the analog world.

 

Bookless libraries indeed exist. In fact, it’s not a new idea. Many university libraries throughout the world have gone bookless more than a decade ago, relying solely on ebooks and digital resources. A few municipal libraries in the United States have tried out the bookless model. A library in Arizona went bookless for a while, but due to pubic outcry the library brought back the printed books. A library in Texas opened a bookless branch in a low income area, providing vital digital services to a community where, historically, wi-fi access has been limited. Because of the vital services this library provides to its community, this new library has been hailed as a success story.

 

Why can’t we do both? Libraries today are asked to provide more and more services. Libraries are not just about the books anymore. Modern libraries often provide maker spaces, computer labs, community meeting rooms, and more. These services cost money and take space.

 

In my local library system (the Charleston County Library, which is wonderful), the largest regional branch building was 16,000 square feet. However, the library system recently built a new branch in my neighborhood that provides both digital and community services as well as room for all kinds of books. This new library building covers a whooping 40,000 square feet. Not every community can afford to build at such a grand scale.

 

My fictional town of Cypress, located in the coastal plain of South Carolina, is like many small towns in the South. (I know. I’ve worked with similar towns in my past life as an urban planner.) Budgets are tight, jobs are scarce, and towns are desperate to attract industries with high paying jobs. Cypress’s town manager comes up with a scheme to make headlines. He takes what little he has in his budget and invests it into modernizing the town’s historic library into a bookless library. The last town to do this had attracted national press, and that’s exactly what he wants. He then plans to use that press coverage to lure high tech industries into investing in the town. His vision it to turn the region into a Silicon Valley of the South. It’s a big gamble, but times are tough and the potential payoff could change the lives of everyone in Cypress.

 

When Trudell Becket, a Cypress Public Library librarian, protests, the town manager gives her a lesson in budgets. The town simply does not have the budget or space to provide digital services and still offer room for a printed book collection. That’s when my warrior librarian decides to do act. She breaks all the rules and saves the printed books that are in the process of being removed to make room for technology.

 

Real life echoes fiction. COVID-19 has been a challenge for libraries. My beautiful 40,000 square foot branch library has been closed. The only way to get books is to order the books online and pick them up at the curb. It’s a necessary precaution. I’d never want the librarians to risk their health. I only mention this because, ironically, since penning this book way back in 2019, I have been experiencing firsthand the angst that I wrote about in The Broken Spine. I dearly miss walking up and down the stacks, discovering books I never knew existed and leaving with many more books than I ever knew I needed. There is a certain magic in discovery that I love about libraries. As we move more and more into the digital age, I hope librarians will be able to figure out a way to replicate this experience for online browsing.

 

In the meantime, I’ll be cheering on (and helping) warrior librarians who have been working fiercely for years in bringing the best resources to their communities.

So, how about it, Reds and Readers, what are your thoughts on booklets libraries?

 

BUY NOW

 

The Broken Spine, which has been called a mystery that “is destined to become a favorite of all book lovers” by Miranda James, New York Times bestselling author of Cat Me if You Can, is the first book in the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. It arrived in bookstores everywhere January 19, 2021.

 

When a small-town librarian sets up a secret bookroom in her newly modernized library, she discovers that protecting the printed word harder than she’d ever imagined.

 

In fact, it’s murder.

 

Dorothy St. James is the author of the White House Gardener Mysteries and the Southern Chocolate Shop Mysteries. She lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with her sculptor husband. Dorothy is a member of Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and Sister’s in Crime (SInC). This is her first Beloved Bookroom Mystery. 

 

Follow Dorothy Online:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/dorothy.stjames

Twitter: www.twitter.com/dorothywrites

Instagram: www.instagram.com/dorothymcfalls

Website: www.dorothystjames.com

 

The Broken SpinePurchase Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086SCQ639

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-broken-spine-dorothy-st-james/1136806393?ean=9780593098578

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/books/the-broken-spine/9780593098578

Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781087855806

 

 

The Groundhog Day Time Loop: What would you do?

Jenn McKinlay: Never during any of the years since the movie Groundhog Day was released (1993) have I felt like I was actually living the Groundhog Day time loop until this year. Mercy! Also, Happy Groundhog Day!!!

While I haven't woken up to the same song every day nor have I learned a new skill, unless doom scrolling counts, it still feels as if one day has bled into the next with nothing to break up the rinse and repeat of the day in day out quarantine lifestyle. 

So, it got me to thinking, if we were actually stuck in a time loop like the movie, what would our extras be? For example Bill Murray's character, weatherman Phil Connors, wakes up to Sonny and Cher's I've Got You Babe every morning on his radio alarm clock. What song would you wake up to every day if you had your pick?

Jenn: Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison, the Beatles

Hallie: Feel Better When I’m Dancin’, Meghan Trainor

Lucy: I would be listening to Luciano Pavarotti and Eric Clapton singing Holy Mother

Rhys: the first thing that came to mind was Morning from Grier’s Peer Gynt suite. I don’t think I handle voices well in the early hours!

Hank: Maybe I Got A Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas? Or The song from West Side Story —Something’s Coming. (Could be, who knows…)

Debs: I think Good Day, Sunshine by the Beatles

 

Julia: Daydream Believer by the Monkees - it's the perfect morning song, and I'm guessing something the local radio station, which must have been an oldies one, right? would play. 

Once Phil realizes he's stuck, he decides to use the time to learn new skills - playing piano, speaking French, and ice sculpting.

If you could master one new skill during a time loop, what would it be? 

Jenn: I would learn to paint landscapes on huge canvases.

Hallie: Cake icing (So mesmerizing, and I’m addicted to The Great British Baking Show)

Lucy: I have been dreaming about a walking and music tour in northern Scotland, and wouldn’t it be fun to know how to play an instrument to join in with the musicians? The fiddle would be amazing, but I’m afraid it’s out of reach.

Rhys: I thought I might do this with my pandemic time  Sourdough bread? Perfecting the harp? Uh no. 

 Maybe learning Chinese

Hank: Playing the piano. Oh I would love to be able to play the piano. I watch people playing, and I think— I can’t even imagine how you could do that. But wouldn’t that be so much fun?

Debs: I really really want to learn to paint with watercolors, and to paint and draw in my journals. Things I thought I might make a tiny bit of progress on in the lockdown, but, no.

 

Julia: I'd learn to sew beautiful clothes with fine dressmaker details and haute couture style.  

Phil is stuck on repeat in Punxsutawney, PA, on Groundhog Day, probably not the place or holiday he would have chosen. If you could pick any holiday to repeat over and over again, which one would it be?

Jenn: Halloween. Spooky costumes and copious amounts of candy win hands down every time.

Hallie: Thanksgiving, because we’re with the kids and grands, though I’d probably get well and truly sick of turkey.

Lucy: I do love Christmas, but if I had to do Christmas cards and shopping and traveling over and over, I bet I would get pretty darn crabby

Rhys: I agree, Lucy. Christmas but without the hassle. Just family together laughing and playing silly games.

Hank: Passover, weirdly. It’s so family centric, and so justice centric, and there’s fabulous food and lots of wine, and profoundly important themes. 

Debs: I love Thanksgiving and Christmas but am horrified by the idea of doing either of them over and over! Maybe Guy Fawkes Day. I love November in England, the bonfires, the fireworks. And who wouldn’t want to celebrate a failed insurrection?

 

Julia: Easter! Like Passover, it's centered on family and food, and you don't need to decorate the house. Plus it's at the end of winter/beginning of spring, and who wouldn't want to experience that hopeful time of the year again and again? 

Jenn: Of course, I have done none of these things, but that's beside the point. Books got written and that feels like achievement enough!

Okay, Readers, how about you? What's your time loop song, skill, and holiday on repeat?

A Nod to Black Authors for Black History Month

JENN McKINLAY: Today marks the start of Black History Month. Having been a public librarian for twenty years, this was always a glorious month for book displays. An opportunity to showcase stories and history and unsung heroes, well, as you can imagine, it gets librarians all in a fizz. So much to highlight and share and only one month to do it! Ack! 

Recently, publishing has come to realize that authors of color are woefully underrepresented and they've stepped up their game to be much more inclusive and supportive. This is such a huge win for readers! I am just thrilled that we will have so many amazingly diverse stories available to us now. 

It also made me think back on the books I read as a child of the 70's/80's and I was trying to remember the first book I read by an author of color - beyond the picture books I loved such as The Snowy Day by Jack Ezra Keats. Sadly, it took me awhile to pin it down. 

I was a freshman in high school and I chose to write a paper about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I remember falling love with her use of language and thinking that my own rough and tumble beginnings would make me strong and possibly a storyteller -- like her. This is one of my favorite quotes:  

So, what about you Reds? Who is the first author of color that you remember reading? 

HALLIE EPHRON: Great question. The first ones I remember were James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Also, assigned pre-college reading: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The first book by a woman of color took longer - the one I remember is THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker. Shocking that it took so long.

RHYS BOWEN: Gosh, I’m trying to remember. My childhood reading was certainly confined to white writers only. There were writers of Indian descent in England but not any of African that I knew about. The first time I was conscious of a black writer was reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and being blown away by his eloquence, a man who grew up as a slave!  It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I discovered Maya Angelou and she immediately became one of my favorite poets.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, I had to think about this, too. The first?  I had to look up the exact words, but we did read the poetry of Langston Hughes. When I googled, I remembered the poem “I, too” which includes “Tomorrow / I’ll be at the table / When company comes. / Nobody’ll dare / Say to me, / “Eat in the kitchen.  It ends with “I, too, am America.”

Langston Hughes

Of course we read Richard Wright’s Native Son, and Ellison’s Invisible Man.  And at some point, James Baldwin’s essays The Fire Next Time. But when, and the first one? That is such a good question.  (And I’d love to hear how we talked about them. Possibly pretty cringe-worthy.)

LUCY BURDETTE: cringe worthy is what I am thinking as well, Hank. I really can’t remember reading a single book from a black author. Maybe there were some in my mind has let them go, but it’s possible there weren’t. I wasn’t good at reading books that I hadn’t chosen, and I suppose that hasn’t changed one bit!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The first thing I thought of was John Howard Griffin’s BLACK LIKE ME, published in 1961. Of course, Griffin WASN’T black. He was a white novelist from Texas who dyed his skin and traveled through the segregated south. Griffin might have eventually come to see his book as cultural appropriation--he wrote some years later that it was  “absurd for a white man to presume to speak for black people when they have superlative voices of their own,” but it is still a remarkable document and had a powerful effect on me as young teen. Here’s a link to a 2011 piece in Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/black-like-me-50-years-later-74543463/

I later read James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, and then Maya Angelou and Alice Walker, of course, but it was the Griffin book that really opened my eyes to segregation for the first time.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I couldn't recall the name of the first African-American author I read, but I remember the novel, so I went looking: CONTENDING FORCES by Pauline Hopkins (who, it turns out, was born in Portland, Maine!) 

My grandmother ran an antique/vintage/junk shop out of her enormous 19th century barn. One of the former box stalls was completely lines on three sides by old books, and during my 12th, 13th and 14th summers I read through most of them. I loved the over-the-top romantic drama of the late 19th/early 20th century women's novels, and Pauline Hopkins was a great example of the genre. There were terrible villains, mistaken identities, at least two women who are supposed to have died but show up later, and lots of romance. 

And the whole thing is about several generations of a Black family in the south and the north. It's only thinking back on it now that I realize Hopkins must have been using the popular commercial conventions of the day to educate white readers on Black life and to create understanding and empathy around the prejudices prevalent then... and unfortunately, still with us today.

So, what about you Readers? Who is the first author of color that you remember reading? 

For more reading recommendations (sorry, librarian!) here's a list of favorite Black authors from the African American Literature Book Club:  https://aalbc.com/authors/top50authors.php?