Friday, March 04, 2011

Rant: library opening hours

Lunch break, I discovered a library just 5 minutes from my company. Excited, I went to check it out while imagining all sorts of thing I could do there during the break: reading newspaper, listening to the musics, start reading a French novel, and my heart wished dearly that I could find some Chinese books there!

I went through the automatic door but got blocked at the second one. Puzzling, I realized, they could be closed for lunch. I was very disappointed, hoping that they would at least open at 1.30pm.

Reality hit me hard, here is what I saw written on their door about their operating hours:
Mon to Fri - every afternoon from 2pm to 7pm
Wed & Sat morning from 10am to 12pm

I felt angry, seriously. My Malaysian mentality once again wanted to question the logic: isn't library one kind of public services? Public services mean serving the public right? So who could go to library at this kind of hours? Unemployed people? Stayed at home mothers? Retirees? Students? Howabout people who work normal hours from 9am to 6pm? And why aren't the library open every morning?

This incident made me realized why I stopped going to library. I used to go to the Mediatheque in Nantes when I was a student, but their operating hours were so inconvenient that I always forgot to return books on time. Since they didn't let you renew online, I paid some fine and decided to just give up.

With this kind of opening hours, I could only go after work but I usually need to rush to get Aelig. This leaves me Sat, the day I love to sleep in...

Explanations that I could think of:
1. The Town Hall here does not care if you read or not. The library exists just for its purpose of existing
2. The librarians need to have lunch between 12pm to 2pm, so the minority's need (librarians having lunch) wins over the majority one (publics need to borrow book)
3. It is a conspiracy between the Town Hall and the book publishers. Inconvenient to borrow will lead to increase in book sales.
4. The Town Hall is cutting cost, the librarians have to cover other tasks so the opening hours have to be reduced.

1 comment:

  1. I kinda agree with your sentiments being a book lover myself.

    ReplyDelete