The New Public Library

Just got back from Borders, where I spend a few hours every Monday while the wife teaches yoga in our house. I load up the briefcase with writing and some reading, then sit at the store's cafe with a coffee to scribble a draft or read. Borders' tables often sport leftover books in this chain bookstore's cafe. It's not uncommon to see a table with a half-dozen books or more. Tonight I sat down in front of a serious pile of resume and cover letter how-to's. Several were aimed at the teacher looking for a spot on someone's faculty.

Just ten years ago that pile might have been in the public library. You couldn't drink coffee there, of course, but that was where the research happened. Today the bookstore cafe is popular with the younger customer who doesn't have a quiet place in their shared apartment to study. Or the money to buy the books they need to research papers or articles. Hey, it's a temptation to a journalist on a budget, too. Now the library is just as likely to be crowded with people surfing the Internet. When I visited a grand old branch in my hometown of Toledo, I had no competition for the swank seat in front of the big bay window.

The staff at my Borders scoops up the research books and discarded magazines every hour or so, re-stacking them like a librarian might have done a decade ago. I figure the bookstores encourage this grazing. Most of them have comfy armchairs right out on the sales floor. Even the independent stores are embracing this borrowing. If it crimps the sales of the non-fiction titles, well, that's a problem for the publishers and the authors to resolve.