# Libraries need more books

Have you noticed how libraries have fewer books in recent years? \[1\] Bookshelves are placed further apart with more computers, desks, and empty spaces for events. I think it's obvious why. People don't read as much as they used to.

So local governments repurpose libraries to serve other roles in their capacity of public spaces. They're a place to go study, use a public computer, or even have events. And God, the chatter I hear in libraries nowadays. Sometimes I think I'm in a café.

This even extends to the greatest libraries in the world. A while back, I had occasion to go to the British Library. "Get free access to 170 million items" - what book lover could possibly resist those words? Not I.

You know what I saw when I got there? Substantially fewer than 170 million books. I'd wager there wasn't even a tenth of that. Most of their collection is stored off-site, and to browse them, you have to book the items days in advance.

And there were other problems, too. The noise, as mentioned before. The inability to take books out of the library. Badly designed software that doesn't let you filter for books that are on site. 90% of the books on site require you to request an inept librarian to spend an hour fetching them. And the mislabelled shelves, which might say they contain books with Dewey decimal indices from 530.11 to 558.01, but really contain books with indices from 490.07 to 518.02.

Worse yet, they had no taste. I'd gone there in the hopes of getting my hands on the full Landau and Lifshitz collection to have a browse. Not a single item could be found on site. Even a mid-grade university's physics department would have a full collection. And no Arnold, no Thorne, no Weinberg. Is this what Great Britain has come to? Truly, a land lacking abundance.

And yet, I still endorse going to libraries. \[2\] For one, they encourage boredom. A prettier way of saying this is that they remove attention-grabbing stimuli. But boredom is good, actually. If you're not bored, you are less likely to try new things.

And libraries have a lot of new books for me to try. I've found a bunch of good books this way. For example, I found an art book on fractals by a physicist, which was both beautiful and insightful. E.g. it outlined some methods for creating programs to generate a given fractal, alongside descriptions of pre-1900s Japanese print artists using simplified fractal-generating algorithms to paint mountains. Or a history of science by Steven Weinberg, a biography of Maynard Keynes, a textbook on projective geometry etc.

Some of these, I had intended to read but forgotten about. Some, I'd never hear of. And some, I never imagined I'd be interested in.

And even if you don't find anything to read, the books can serve as inspirations for what you do want to read. E.g. reading the Born-Einstein letters made me want to read more on Einstein.

You can, of course, use the boredom in other ways. To focus deeply on something or to give yourself a place to think in peace. Or just to take a break from attention-grabbing stimuli. It's why I rarely use computers at the library. 

But then, the shift in context of working in a library helps me use computers more productively. Which is another plus. 

Not all libraries are equal. Some, as mentioned, contain too much chatter. Or too few books. Or bizarre failures in labelling. So what do? There are a couple of options. One, just trawl through Google Maps for libraries in your area and look at the images to estimate the number of books. Two, search online about libraries in your area. Three, there's probably a forum somewhere about good libraries to go to. Four, maybe break into a university library. Surely some of them have loose enough security to let you in, and tight enough security to keep the riff-raff out. 

However, we've got off-topic from the most important point. I go to libraries to read books, dang it. I demand more books. So many books, they have to make space by building the bookshelves out of books. 

\[1\] Maybe you haven't noticed this, because you live in an enlightened country. Maybe it is only here that this sacrilege has occurred. Maybe I've doxed myself. But in 1-3 years when we automate Rainbolt, everyone will be doxed.

\[2\] More on the margin, for all advice is on the margin. The optimal level of anything is not zero. Unless you live in a country where libraries are full of fentanyl addicts, in which case, go live in a civilized country.