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dustydigger
Posted 2015-04-24 3:05 AM (#10287 - in reply to #10281)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		I agree,Jim,in spades.The peoplestruggling to save books in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 would be in despair. No need to burn books,just let them get tatty and dont replace them! lol. We are going through a crisis for libraries here in UK,as all local government scrambles to find ways to implement national government austerity cuts. . Two years ago,for instance,the annual book budget for my library system,of 39 branches,was down from 6 million to r4.25 million.I dont know the figure for last year,but it must be even less. Where once almost every branch would get at least one,usually two or three copies of a title,now,apart from the blockbuster headline authors,we are lucky to get a handful of copies shared out among all the branches. Now apart from the big names,to save money they get us paperbacks,which fall apart quickly and there is little hope of replacement.The public have a voracious appetite for new books,so why waste what little money there is on some 60 year old pulpy trashy book about bug-eyed monsters,as many still view SF. I cant believe that in our system there isnt one copy of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. They have a single copy of about 10 of his books in the county reserve stacks,and believe me its like pulling teeth to get at them. I put in a request for Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud,and am still waiting 9 mths later.
My dream is that someone like SF Gateway,the Gollancz project to publish old SF books,could set up something like Overdrive,a lending library for their books.For 50 cents you could borrow any of their titles, like a ebook from the local library. I get so frustrated when I see their tantalising lists of old books. Too pricey to buy,but a type of library loan would be wonderful Any millionaires lurking around here to set up something like that?I would be their first member!
Mind you ,its not just SF suffering. If anything,its even worse trying to locate old crime fiction. My library system has no Rex Stout,Ellery Queen, and the situation is pretty dire really for anythingbbefore 1990. I have a list of 100 famous crime novels and only 16 of them are available in the library - and I've already read those

Edited by dustydigger 2015-04-24 3:23 AM

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