January 29, 2016
Ontario Library Service North in Sudbury will receive $113,000 over two years to fund a study that will measure the importance and impact that libraries have in small and rural communities across Northern Ontario.
This investment is part of the Ontario Libraries Capacity Fund, a $10 million program to help public libraries support strong, vibrant communities and better meet the changing needs of Ontarians.
The fund supports new projects that can be adapted to suit the needs of other communities and have the potential for a positive impact on public libraries across the province and the people they serve.
The provincial government is supporting 10 new projects in public libraries that will improve services for Ontarians.
“Ontario Library Service North is an integral part of the fabric of our community,” said Sudbury MPP Glenn Thibeault, in a press release.
“With support from the provincial government for this project, the library will be able to deliver even more benefits and continue to enrich people’s lives here in Sudbury and across the north.”
“In today’s rapidly changing world, public libraries need to continuously innovate and find new ways to meet the needs of their communities,” said Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Michael Coteau.
“I’m proud we are supporting 10 new projects that will help libraries enhance the vital role they play and ensure their programs are having a positive impact. Libraries across the province will be able to learn from the results and knowledge gained through these initiatives.”
Source: Northern Live
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Philly.com: The Inside Poop on Librarians' Daily Adventures
The inside poop on librarians' daily adventures
By Roz Warren
January 28, 2016
A man recently defecated in the stairwell at the Ludington Library in Bryn Mawr. The deed and the person’s subsequent exit from the building were both captured by the library’s security cameras, and the local police circulated footage of the perp leaving the library and asked the public to help identify him. (What did he look like? An ordinary, somewhat distracted-looking middle-aged guy. If you passed him on the street you wouldn’t look at him twice.)
It’s safe to say that the library-going public was shocked and horrified by what he did. It’s also safe to say that nobody who has ever worked at a public library was the least bit surprised.
What this man did is a fact of library life, which was reflected in the comments of librarians all over the country when the story was posted on Facebook:
“The public has no idea how often this ... happens.”
“Happened to me just last week. My first week as a branch manager. What a welcome.”
“Wish I could say this has never happened at my library.”
“Two summers ago we had a guy who left daily ‘presents’ all over the building. We never knew where they’d turn up next. Worst game of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ ever.’”
“Everyone who visits our library comments on our beautifully patterned carpet squares. If only they knew why we chose those easily removable squares!”
“I’m laughing because whenever I talk about ‘inappropriate poop’ in my library nobody believes me! Happens wa-a-a-ay more than they imagine.”
Everyone is welcome at the local public library. But not everyone does (or can) behave as well as we’d like.
Both our very youngest and our very oldest patrons will, inevitably, have “accidents.” And then there are the troubled or angry individuals who do this stuff on purpose.
The sad reality is that no place in a public library is immune. Librarians tell of finding “deposits” in the stacks. Under a table in the quiet study room. By the computers. On a comfy chair in the reading nook. In the book drop. Once, mysteriously, right in front of the reference desk on a day when the library was packed.
And do certain patrons play Jackson Pollack on our bathroom walls with their own waste? Alas, yes.
The Ludington Pooper, most assumed, was a troubled individual. Which, when a suspect was identified (Thanks, Internet!) seemed to be the case. Let’s hope he’ll get any help he needs.
Librarians everywhere were happy that he’d been captured on camera, and could be apprehended and stopped. But we all know that this kind of activity remains an ongoing challenge.
My hope is that this incident won’t be (so to speak) a total waste. Perhaps it will raise the public’s consciousness about what being a librarian is actually like. I love my job, but it isn’t always easy.
People imagine that librarians spend their days in a serene, untroubled environment, working with books and chatting with patrons.
“You’re so lucky,” I’ve been told. “You get paid to read!”
We do read. Sometimes.
We also endure your wrath about paying fines, move heaven and Earth to find the reference work you need, spread tarp over the shelves when the ceiling leaks, recommend a movie that will fascinate your daughter’s preteen pals at her sleepover party without offending any of their mothers, attempt to stop you from tearing pages out of our magazines, knock ourselves out to entertain your kids at story time, teach you how to open your own email, listen with sympathy to your confidences and — unfortunately — occasionally have to clean up after you.
You’re welcome.
Roz Warren is a circulation assistant at the Bala Cynwyd Library and the author of “Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection of Library Humor.” roswarren@gmail.com
Source: Philly.com
By Roz Warren
January 28, 2016
A man recently defecated in the stairwell at the Ludington Library in Bryn Mawr. The deed and the person’s subsequent exit from the building were both captured by the library’s security cameras, and the local police circulated footage of the perp leaving the library and asked the public to help identify him. (What did he look like? An ordinary, somewhat distracted-looking middle-aged guy. If you passed him on the street you wouldn’t look at him twice.)
It’s safe to say that the library-going public was shocked and horrified by what he did. It’s also safe to say that nobody who has ever worked at a public library was the least bit surprised.
What this man did is a fact of library life, which was reflected in the comments of librarians all over the country when the story was posted on Facebook:
“The public has no idea how often this ... happens.”
“Happened to me just last week. My first week as a branch manager. What a welcome.”
“Wish I could say this has never happened at my library.”
“Two summers ago we had a guy who left daily ‘presents’ all over the building. We never knew where they’d turn up next. Worst game of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ ever.’”
“Everyone who visits our library comments on our beautifully patterned carpet squares. If only they knew why we chose those easily removable squares!”
“I’m laughing because whenever I talk about ‘inappropriate poop’ in my library nobody believes me! Happens wa-a-a-ay more than they imagine.”
Everyone is welcome at the local public library. But not everyone does (or can) behave as well as we’d like.
Both our very youngest and our very oldest patrons will, inevitably, have “accidents.” And then there are the troubled or angry individuals who do this stuff on purpose.
The sad reality is that no place in a public library is immune. Librarians tell of finding “deposits” in the stacks. Under a table in the quiet study room. By the computers. On a comfy chair in the reading nook. In the book drop. Once, mysteriously, right in front of the reference desk on a day when the library was packed.
And do certain patrons play Jackson Pollack on our bathroom walls with their own waste? Alas, yes.
The Ludington Pooper, most assumed, was a troubled individual. Which, when a suspect was identified (Thanks, Internet!) seemed to be the case. Let’s hope he’ll get any help he needs.
Librarians everywhere were happy that he’d been captured on camera, and could be apprehended and stopped. But we all know that this kind of activity remains an ongoing challenge.
My hope is that this incident won’t be (so to speak) a total waste. Perhaps it will raise the public’s consciousness about what being a librarian is actually like. I love my job, but it isn’t always easy.
People imagine that librarians spend their days in a serene, untroubled environment, working with books and chatting with patrons.
“You’re so lucky,” I’ve been told. “You get paid to read!”
We do read. Sometimes.
We also endure your wrath about paying fines, move heaven and Earth to find the reference work you need, spread tarp over the shelves when the ceiling leaks, recommend a movie that will fascinate your daughter’s preteen pals at her sleepover party without offending any of their mothers, attempt to stop you from tearing pages out of our magazines, knock ourselves out to entertain your kids at story time, teach you how to open your own email, listen with sympathy to your confidences and — unfortunately — occasionally have to clean up after you.
You’re welcome.
Roz Warren is a circulation assistant at the Bala Cynwyd Library and the author of “Our Bodies, Our Shelves: A Collection of Library Humor.” roswarren@gmail.com
Source: Philly.com
Friday, February 5, 2016
The Wall Street Journal: In Age of Google, Librarians Get Shelved
In Age of Google, Librarians Get Shelved
A library-science degree can’t compete with online search, but we still have a role.
By Steve Barker
January 10, 2016
The next time you visit a public library and see an older person at the information desk, someone near retirement age, take a good look. You may be seeing the last of a dying breed, the professional librarian.
Years ago, a librarian was someone who held a master’s degree in library science (MLS) issued by a graduate program accredited by the American Library Association. Those of us who attended library schools underwent rigorous preparation, usually assignments that forced us to become familiar with the reference books and research tools that filled the university library.
The Internet changed all that. The library user who used to rely on a librarian for help can now Google his question and find more data in a few seconds than a librarian was able to locate in hours of research.
Many people who work as librarians no longer hold an MLS degree. Public libraries have created a new position called “library associate”—college graduates who do the same work as librarians but receive lower salaries than their MLS counterparts.
The erosion of the MLS degree has been mirrored by the disappearance of library schools from American universities. The University of Chicago and Columbia University once offered the best librarian training programs in the country; both institutions closed their library schools in the early 1990s.
Vanderbilt and the University of Southern California also closed their library schools around the same time. It is still possible to get an MLS degree, but the remaining graduate programs are much smaller and are usually consolidated in other departments or schools.
The mood among some librarians is pessimistic. A New Mexico librarian recently told me: “I spend most of my time making change and showing people how to print from the computer or use the copier. I sure don’t get the reference questions like I used to.”
A colleague in the Washington, D.C., area expressed similar views: “If I didn’t spend my time helping people look for lost keys, wallets, jackets, sweaters, gloves, backpacks, cellphones and laptops, I’m not sure I’d even have a job.”
One bright spot: Some public libraries have created jobs for “technology assistants,” positions filled by tech-savvy young people with community-college degrees and plans for information-technology careers. Libraries can easily justify this new position: Techies are paid less than librarians or library associates and they offer skills the public increasingly needs. The public library of the future might be a computer center, staffed by IT professionals and few books or librarians.
Those of us who hold MLS degrees and are still working recognize the inevitability of these trends. But large segments of the American public struggle with literacy, or want to study for the high-school GED, or are learning English and want to know where they can register to vote. We can still help children with their homework and play a role in our communities, as we have been doing for over a century.
The role for librarians and public libraries is shrinking. But I imagine that in another hundred years, we will still be here, in one form or another.
Mr. Barker is a librarian in the Washington, D.C., area.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
A library-science degree can’t compete with online search, but we still have a role.
By Steve Barker
January 10, 2016
The next time you visit a public library and see an older person at the information desk, someone near retirement age, take a good look. You may be seeing the last of a dying breed, the professional librarian.
Years ago, a librarian was someone who held a master’s degree in library science (MLS) issued by a graduate program accredited by the American Library Association. Those of us who attended library schools underwent rigorous preparation, usually assignments that forced us to become familiar with the reference books and research tools that filled the university library.
The Internet changed all that. The library user who used to rely on a librarian for help can now Google his question and find more data in a few seconds than a librarian was able to locate in hours of research.
Many people who work as librarians no longer hold an MLS degree. Public libraries have created a new position called “library associate”—college graduates who do the same work as librarians but receive lower salaries than their MLS counterparts.
The erosion of the MLS degree has been mirrored by the disappearance of library schools from American universities. The University of Chicago and Columbia University once offered the best librarian training programs in the country; both institutions closed their library schools in the early 1990s.
Vanderbilt and the University of Southern California also closed their library schools around the same time. It is still possible to get an MLS degree, but the remaining graduate programs are much smaller and are usually consolidated in other departments or schools.
The mood among some librarians is pessimistic. A New Mexico librarian recently told me: “I spend most of my time making change and showing people how to print from the computer or use the copier. I sure don’t get the reference questions like I used to.”
A colleague in the Washington, D.C., area expressed similar views: “If I didn’t spend my time helping people look for lost keys, wallets, jackets, sweaters, gloves, backpacks, cellphones and laptops, I’m not sure I’d even have a job.”
One bright spot: Some public libraries have created jobs for “technology assistants,” positions filled by tech-savvy young people with community-college degrees and plans for information-technology careers. Libraries can easily justify this new position: Techies are paid less than librarians or library associates and they offer skills the public increasingly needs. The public library of the future might be a computer center, staffed by IT professionals and few books or librarians.
Those of us who hold MLS degrees and are still working recognize the inevitability of these trends. But large segments of the American public struggle with literacy, or want to study for the high-school GED, or are learning English and want to know where they can register to vote. We can still help children with their homework and play a role in our communities, as we have been doing for over a century.
The role for librarians and public libraries is shrinking. But I imagine that in another hundred years, we will still be here, in one form or another.
Mr. Barker is a librarian in the Washington, D.C., area.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Thursday, February 4, 2016
The Guardian: The Loss of Libraries is Another Surefire Way to Entrench Inequality
The loss of libraries is another surefire way to entrench inequality
I still have my first library card from when I was a girl from a poor family in west Belfast. Every time I hear of a library closure it hits a nerve.
By Mary O'Hara
January 27, 2016
As someone who grew up in a home without books, no spare cash to buy them and no tradition of reading bedtime stories, my local library offered something unique and indispensable. It’s hard to think of anything that brought me more joy as a primary school-aged child than walking back from the Falls Road library in west Belfast with a bundle of books.
Having a library within walking distance of home was a way for a young girl from a poor background to access the same breadth of reading material as anyone else – at no expense. It stripped away at least some of the disadvantage that came with being from a low-income family. So every time I hear of another library closure – and there were more than 100 last year alone in Scotland, Wales and England, according to official figures – it hits a nerve. The loss of libraries is simply another surefire way to entrench inequality.
From providing books for people of all ages and backgrounds, to kids clubs and hubs for older people, to computer terminals that those with no access to the internet can use to find job vacancies, libraries are about as democratic and diverse as is possible to imagine. When properly funded and resourced they are educational and social anchors in communities everywhere. Yet, despite knowing all this, in the past five years the relentless funding constraints placed on local authorities have seen library budgets slashed by an astounding amount.
Over the course of the last parliament, cuts to services and closures amounted to a 16% reduction in library funding – a whopping £180m less than in 2010. As if that wasn’t enough, last month the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy questioned the long-term sustainability of council-run libraries after its latest calculations confirmed another £50m had been wiped from library budgets across England, Scotland and Wales in the previous 12 months.
Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip) has warned that the billions of pounds of extra funding cuts for local authorities will mean another round of savage reductions in library services, and potentially a stark postcode lottery as councils in poorer areas feel they must jettison library services.
Cilip also pointed out (and this is something often missed when looking just at the numbers) that even where services are still running, many are hollowing out. Libraries are increasingly reliant on volunteers, for example. In fact, between 2009-10 and 2014-15 a quarter of all professional library posts (6,172) disappeared. In many libraries that have survived, book stocks are depleted, opening hours reduced and, in some cases, swipe card access used to save on staff costs.
There has also been a fall in library-run projects targeted at particular groups, including the most marginalised, according to a Cilip straw poll last year. Services designed for disabled people and other disadvantaged groups – the very people who benefit most from libraries – are at risk of further erosion.
Nick Poole, chief executive of Cilip, said libraries “have been seen as an easy target” but that cuts to frontline services are both misguided and short-sighted. “What we’ve got with regards to libraries is a systematic policy of neglect,” he said. Librarians and users have taken to the streets in protest against cuts, while Cilip has launched a campaign, My library by right, as well as a legal challenge to seek clarification of the government’s legal duty under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act to provide a “comprehensive and efficient” service. It has also launched a petition that has so far garnered more than 10,000 signatures.
Nevertheless, libraries remain vulnerable. As the current financial year draws to a close, councils are finalising their budgets, an unenviable task in the current climate. The Department for Media, Culture and Sport insists libraries are modernising and new libraries are being built, for example, in Stafford and Camberwell. A spokeswoman told me that local authorities are repeatedly reminded of their statutory obligations. This is all well and good, but its easy to cherry pick. On the flip side Birmingham’s new multimillion pound flagship library announced last autumn that it would have to stop buying new books because of cuts. And is it really any wonder libraries are being sacrificed when councils are struggling to cover services such as social care?
There is so much more at stake than people not being able to take home some books. The UK’s library service has for decades been one of its great, tangible symbols of social justice and has adapted admirably to changing demand. It is something we should all stand up for, whether we use what’s on offer or not. I still have my first library card. What have we become if in the years ahead far fewer people are able to say the same thing?
Source: The Guardian
I still have my first library card from when I was a girl from a poor family in west Belfast. Every time I hear of a library closure it hits a nerve.
By Mary O'Hara
January 27, 2016
As someone who grew up in a home without books, no spare cash to buy them and no tradition of reading bedtime stories, my local library offered something unique and indispensable. It’s hard to think of anything that brought me more joy as a primary school-aged child than walking back from the Falls Road library in west Belfast with a bundle of books.
Having a library within walking distance of home was a way for a young girl from a poor background to access the same breadth of reading material as anyone else – at no expense. It stripped away at least some of the disadvantage that came with being from a low-income family. So every time I hear of another library closure – and there were more than 100 last year alone in Scotland, Wales and England, according to official figures – it hits a nerve. The loss of libraries is simply another surefire way to entrench inequality.
From providing books for people of all ages and backgrounds, to kids clubs and hubs for older people, to computer terminals that those with no access to the internet can use to find job vacancies, libraries are about as democratic and diverse as is possible to imagine. When properly funded and resourced they are educational and social anchors in communities everywhere. Yet, despite knowing all this, in the past five years the relentless funding constraints placed on local authorities have seen library budgets slashed by an astounding amount.
Over the course of the last parliament, cuts to services and closures amounted to a 16% reduction in library funding – a whopping £180m less than in 2010. As if that wasn’t enough, last month the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy questioned the long-term sustainability of council-run libraries after its latest calculations confirmed another £50m had been wiped from library budgets across England, Scotland and Wales in the previous 12 months.
Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip) has warned that the billions of pounds of extra funding cuts for local authorities will mean another round of savage reductions in library services, and potentially a stark postcode lottery as councils in poorer areas feel they must jettison library services.
Cilip also pointed out (and this is something often missed when looking just at the numbers) that even where services are still running, many are hollowing out. Libraries are increasingly reliant on volunteers, for example. In fact, between 2009-10 and 2014-15 a quarter of all professional library posts (6,172) disappeared. In many libraries that have survived, book stocks are depleted, opening hours reduced and, in some cases, swipe card access used to save on staff costs.
There has also been a fall in library-run projects targeted at particular groups, including the most marginalised, according to a Cilip straw poll last year. Services designed for disabled people and other disadvantaged groups – the very people who benefit most from libraries – are at risk of further erosion.
Nick Poole, chief executive of Cilip, said libraries “have been seen as an easy target” but that cuts to frontline services are both misguided and short-sighted. “What we’ve got with regards to libraries is a systematic policy of neglect,” he said. Librarians and users have taken to the streets in protest against cuts, while Cilip has launched a campaign, My library by right, as well as a legal challenge to seek clarification of the government’s legal duty under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act to provide a “comprehensive and efficient” service. It has also launched a petition that has so far garnered more than 10,000 signatures.
Nevertheless, libraries remain vulnerable. As the current financial year draws to a close, councils are finalising their budgets, an unenviable task in the current climate. The Department for Media, Culture and Sport insists libraries are modernising and new libraries are being built, for example, in Stafford and Camberwell. A spokeswoman told me that local authorities are repeatedly reminded of their statutory obligations. This is all well and good, but its easy to cherry pick. On the flip side Birmingham’s new multimillion pound flagship library announced last autumn that it would have to stop buying new books because of cuts. And is it really any wonder libraries are being sacrificed when councils are struggling to cover services such as social care?
There is so much more at stake than people not being able to take home some books. The UK’s library service has for decades been one of its great, tangible symbols of social justice and has adapted admirably to changing demand. It is something we should all stand up for, whether we use what’s on offer or not. I still have my first library card. What have we become if in the years ahead far fewer people are able to say the same thing?
Source: The Guardian
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
The Guardian: 'Speak up before there's nothing left': Authors Rally for National Libraries Day
'Speak up before there's nothing left': authors rally for National Libraries Day
A week of events tied to the nationwide celebration on 6 February is drawing support from writers and campaigners, as libraries face closure around the UK.
By Alison Flood
January 28, 2016
The bestselling children’s author Philip Ardagh has called on book lovers to “speak up for libraries before there’s nothing left to shout about”, as writers and campaigners prepare for a week of events celebrating the UK’s libraries in the build-up to National Libraries Day on Saturday 6 February.
The annual nationwide celebration of libraries is the latest move by campaigners to highlight the importance of a public service that is being hit by cuts up and down the country. Ann Cleeves, author of the bestselling Vera and Shetland crime series, has been named National Libraries Day ambassador and has urged people to go out and join their local library next week.
“Libraries matter. If we believe in equality of opportunity we must fight, not just for the buildings but for the range of books inside and the skilled staff who can promote reading in all its forms,” said the novelist. “Not only do libraries encourage us to be more tolerant and better informed, they contribute enormously to the wealth of the nation.”
Cleeves added that she “wouldn’t be a writer without a library, and lots of authors will tell you the same thing”. “They’re magic places,” she said. “And we need them for democracy – there should be equal access to books, information and facts for everybody.”
Grubtown Tales author Philip Ardagh, who will be joining campaigners lobbying parliament on 9 February, called the local library “a port of call for books, local information, human contact, internet access, newspapers and magazines; a safe environment, a quiet environment, help with form-filling, advice, and the countless other little things that all add up to bigger things … Speak up for libraries before there’s nothing left to shout about.”
With more than 100 libraries closing in England, Wales and Scotland last year, local communities will be joined next week by authors and illustrators including Roger McGough and Nick Sharratt to celebrate the ones that remain. More than 400 events are planned for the week leading up to the main events on Saturday.
The celebration was originally called for by the children’s author and campaigner Alan Gibbons, who said on Thursday that the public library service is in the middle of its worst ever crisis, with action “urgently needed to secure its future”.
The event is run by organisations including the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals and the Reading Agency. Cilip is also currently running a campaign, My Library By Right, calling on the government to “fulfil their statutory responsibilities to taxpayers” and keep libraries open. More than 11,000 people have signed its petition, supported by authors including Neil Gaiman and Joanna Trollope, asking the government to “take clear and decisive action in situations where services are being put at risk”.
Authors will also come together on 9 February to join a lobby of parliament led by the Speak Up for Libraries group, calling on government to acknowledge the importance of public libraries. Speakers including Ardagh, Gibbons, crime author Jake Arnott and young adult author Cathy Cassidy will join a public rally at Central Hall, Westminster, with campaigners from around the country then planning to “descend on the Commons to lobby MPs to focus on the root cause of libraries’ grim situation – apathy and ignorance in local and central government”, said organisers.
“These people are fighting hard locally to keep libraries alive. They are desperate to show this is a major issue for the whole nation,” said campaigner Laura Swaffield. “And it’s not too late for others to join us.”
Arnott, author of He Kills Coppers, said that “throughout our history, the library has proved to be the most effective and resilient memory system for our culture and civilisation. The public library creates a collective consciousness. Any attack on it simply adds to a social dementia.”
Cassidy called the closure of libraries “a national scandal”, and called on the public to “stand together against these closures, for the sake of our children and the future of our country”.
Source: The Guardian
A week of events tied to the nationwide celebration on 6 February is drawing support from writers and campaigners, as libraries face closure around the UK.
By Alison Flood
January 28, 2016
The bestselling children’s author Philip Ardagh has called on book lovers to “speak up for libraries before there’s nothing left to shout about”, as writers and campaigners prepare for a week of events celebrating the UK’s libraries in the build-up to National Libraries Day on Saturday 6 February.
The annual nationwide celebration of libraries is the latest move by campaigners to highlight the importance of a public service that is being hit by cuts up and down the country. Ann Cleeves, author of the bestselling Vera and Shetland crime series, has been named National Libraries Day ambassador and has urged people to go out and join their local library next week.
“Libraries matter. If we believe in equality of opportunity we must fight, not just for the buildings but for the range of books inside and the skilled staff who can promote reading in all its forms,” said the novelist. “Not only do libraries encourage us to be more tolerant and better informed, they contribute enormously to the wealth of the nation.”
Cleeves added that she “wouldn’t be a writer without a library, and lots of authors will tell you the same thing”. “They’re magic places,” she said. “And we need them for democracy – there should be equal access to books, information and facts for everybody.”
Grubtown Tales author Philip Ardagh, who will be joining campaigners lobbying parliament on 9 February, called the local library “a port of call for books, local information, human contact, internet access, newspapers and magazines; a safe environment, a quiet environment, help with form-filling, advice, and the countless other little things that all add up to bigger things … Speak up for libraries before there’s nothing left to shout about.”
With more than 100 libraries closing in England, Wales and Scotland last year, local communities will be joined next week by authors and illustrators including Roger McGough and Nick Sharratt to celebrate the ones that remain. More than 400 events are planned for the week leading up to the main events on Saturday.
The celebration was originally called for by the children’s author and campaigner Alan Gibbons, who said on Thursday that the public library service is in the middle of its worst ever crisis, with action “urgently needed to secure its future”.
The event is run by organisations including the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals and the Reading Agency. Cilip is also currently running a campaign, My Library By Right, calling on the government to “fulfil their statutory responsibilities to taxpayers” and keep libraries open. More than 11,000 people have signed its petition, supported by authors including Neil Gaiman and Joanna Trollope, asking the government to “take clear and decisive action in situations where services are being put at risk”.
Authors will also come together on 9 February to join a lobby of parliament led by the Speak Up for Libraries group, calling on government to acknowledge the importance of public libraries. Speakers including Ardagh, Gibbons, crime author Jake Arnott and young adult author Cathy Cassidy will join a public rally at Central Hall, Westminster, with campaigners from around the country then planning to “descend on the Commons to lobby MPs to focus on the root cause of libraries’ grim situation – apathy and ignorance in local and central government”, said organisers.
“These people are fighting hard locally to keep libraries alive. They are desperate to show this is a major issue for the whole nation,” said campaigner Laura Swaffield. “And it’s not too late for others to join us.”
Arnott, author of He Kills Coppers, said that “throughout our history, the library has proved to be the most effective and resilient memory system for our culture and civilisation. The public library creates a collective consciousness. Any attack on it simply adds to a social dementia.”
Cassidy called the closure of libraries “a national scandal”, and called on the public to “stand together against these closures, for the sake of our children and the future of our country”.
Source: The Guardian
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Quartz: The Secret World of Membership Libraries
The secret world of membership libraries
By Grace Dobush
January 29, 2016
Public libraries are a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 1880s, when Andrew Carnegie started funding the more than 1,600 library buildings that bear his name, most libraries in America were subscription-based, with members funding and shaping the collections. As free public libraries sprouted up across the United States, membership libraries mostly died off, but 19 non-profit membership libraries still exist, and are reinventing themselves as cultural centers and the coolest coworking spaces you could dream of.
I’m an itinerant freelance writer and work most of the year in Cincinnati, where I discovered the Mercantile Library a few years ago, when it was hosting a small concert. The majestic space immediately appealed to my aesthetics, but I had no idea of its history. The Mercantile was founded in 1835 as a young merchants’ association library—the collection is generalist, though early on there was a ban on novels that has since been reversed. The original cast iron and walnut newspaper reading desks remain in the building that the association secured with a 10,000-year lease for $1 annually.
In the first 70 years of its existence, the Mercantile Library was the most trafficked in Cincinnati, former director Albert Pyle wrote in the book America’s Membership Libraries. That was before the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County opened its original main branch, a gorgeous structure that has since been demolished, and its 40 additional libraries.
While public libraries remain a vital resource for the community, membership libraries serve a self-selected clientele looking for something more. On quiet days, the Mercantile Library is my private aerie, a literary hideout of mahogany and leather. On busier days it’s a well-appointed office, miles nicer than any I’ve ever worked in, with coworkers who have chosen to be with each other. Coworking spaces in mid-sized Midwestern cities such as Cincinnati cost upwards of $300 a month—which, honestly, is more than half my rent. But membership at the Mercantile Library is $55 a year, and its brethren charge anywhere from $15 to $250 annually.
The first subscription library in North America was Benjamin Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 with members paying 40 shillings to join and promising 10 shillings per year towards buying new books. “Public libraries made books universally available, but they did not supply the other need for which membership libraries were created, the need for a social forum, where books and the matter they contained could be discussed,” Nicolas Barker wrote in America’s Membership Libraries. These were a distinctly American invention—the first subscription library did not appear in England until 1797. Instead, book collections were owned by religious institutions, schools, universities, and private individuals, and “circulating libraries” charged per book. Franklin’s subscription library ”produced a new class of reader, someone firmly placed between those who could read Franklin’s almanacs, on the one hand, and the well-educated elite on the other,” Richard Wendorf wrote in the same book.
In Cincinnati, the Mercantile Library’s membership peaked around the time of the Civil War at more than 3,000, and dipped to just 500 by the late 20th century. Its board realized it had to reinvent the organization to maintain relevance in a world replete with public libraries. The Mercantile’s lecture series have featured Julia Child, Ray Bradbury, and John Updike, and it hosts small concerts, book groups, and social hours. (I’m a frequent guest on its book discussion podcast.) When I joined the library three years ago, the clientele was overwhelmingly older men in suits coming in at lunchtime to eat their Subway sandwiches. The Mercantile Library’s new director, John Faherty, a reformed reporter poached from the Cincinnati Enquirer, is actively recruiting creative people around the city as members, doling out annual passes like a skinny Santa.
“Over the century, our position in society has changed a little bit,” Faherty says. “We’re as much about being a place that celebrate books and where people talk about books more than it is a place where people check books out.” His little cage of an office is right next to the wrought-iron stacks, with some sliding shelves for oversize volumes that he’s crazy about. The Mercantile’s staff is just five people, but some of its programs draw hundreds of patrons.
In San Francisco, another membership library follows a similar ethos. “We don’t try to compete with the public library,” says Deb Hunt, director of the Mechanics’ Institute Library. “We want to be the cultural center for the bay area.” And what they specialize in is community, as evidenced by the high librarian-patron ratio and the legendary Tuesday night chess marathons.
The Mechanics’ Institute was founded in 1854 and has been in its current building since 1910—owning a prime piece of San Francisco real estate definitely helps their budget. Now the library has about 4,600 members, but before the 1906 earthquake it peaked at more than 10,000.
Hunt is quick to point out the difference between private libraries and membership libraries. “A private library is exclusive—you have to be recommended, and the bar is very high,” with initiation fees in the thousands of dollars, she says. Her library costs just $95 a year to join. “We feel it’s very democratic.” In November, the Mechanics’ Institute Library will host the fourth international conference of independent and member libraries, the first held in the United States. And although most membership libraries were created before the 20th century, one more has just sprouted in Washington: Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum opened its doors this month.
The low barrier to entry makes me wonder why membership libraries remain such well-kept secrets, but the Mechanics’ Institute’s demographics are getting younger, as are the Mercantile Library’s. “We kind of appeal to younger people in a way I didn’t anticipate. We are so authentic. And we’re not like purposefully authentic—we’re not ironically or contrived authentic. We’re just authentic. And I think that appeals to people. It appeals to me,” Faherty says. “The world can feel like a contrivance. This place is anything but.”
You can follow Grace on Twitter at @GraceDobushToGo. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
Source: Quartz
By Grace Dobush
January 29, 2016
Public libraries are a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 1880s, when Andrew Carnegie started funding the more than 1,600 library buildings that bear his name, most libraries in America were subscription-based, with members funding and shaping the collections. As free public libraries sprouted up across the United States, membership libraries mostly died off, but 19 non-profit membership libraries still exist, and are reinventing themselves as cultural centers and the coolest coworking spaces you could dream of.
I’m an itinerant freelance writer and work most of the year in Cincinnati, where I discovered the Mercantile Library a few years ago, when it was hosting a small concert. The majestic space immediately appealed to my aesthetics, but I had no idea of its history. The Mercantile was founded in 1835 as a young merchants’ association library—the collection is generalist, though early on there was a ban on novels that has since been reversed. The original cast iron and walnut newspaper reading desks remain in the building that the association secured with a 10,000-year lease for $1 annually.
In the first 70 years of its existence, the Mercantile Library was the most trafficked in Cincinnati, former director Albert Pyle wrote in the book America’s Membership Libraries. That was before the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County opened its original main branch, a gorgeous structure that has since been demolished, and its 40 additional libraries.
While public libraries remain a vital resource for the community, membership libraries serve a self-selected clientele looking for something more. On quiet days, the Mercantile Library is my private aerie, a literary hideout of mahogany and leather. On busier days it’s a well-appointed office, miles nicer than any I’ve ever worked in, with coworkers who have chosen to be with each other. Coworking spaces in mid-sized Midwestern cities such as Cincinnati cost upwards of $300 a month—which, honestly, is more than half my rent. But membership at the Mercantile Library is $55 a year, and its brethren charge anywhere from $15 to $250 annually.
The first subscription library in North America was Benjamin Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 with members paying 40 shillings to join and promising 10 shillings per year towards buying new books. “Public libraries made books universally available, but they did not supply the other need for which membership libraries were created, the need for a social forum, where books and the matter they contained could be discussed,” Nicolas Barker wrote in America’s Membership Libraries. These were a distinctly American invention—the first subscription library did not appear in England until 1797. Instead, book collections were owned by religious institutions, schools, universities, and private individuals, and “circulating libraries” charged per book. Franklin’s subscription library ”produced a new class of reader, someone firmly placed between those who could read Franklin’s almanacs, on the one hand, and the well-educated elite on the other,” Richard Wendorf wrote in the same book.
In Cincinnati, the Mercantile Library’s membership peaked around the time of the Civil War at more than 3,000, and dipped to just 500 by the late 20th century. Its board realized it had to reinvent the organization to maintain relevance in a world replete with public libraries. The Mercantile’s lecture series have featured Julia Child, Ray Bradbury, and John Updike, and it hosts small concerts, book groups, and social hours. (I’m a frequent guest on its book discussion podcast.) When I joined the library three years ago, the clientele was overwhelmingly older men in suits coming in at lunchtime to eat their Subway sandwiches. The Mercantile Library’s new director, John Faherty, a reformed reporter poached from the Cincinnati Enquirer, is actively recruiting creative people around the city as members, doling out annual passes like a skinny Santa.
“Over the century, our position in society has changed a little bit,” Faherty says. “We’re as much about being a place that celebrate books and where people talk about books more than it is a place where people check books out.” His little cage of an office is right next to the wrought-iron stacks, with some sliding shelves for oversize volumes that he’s crazy about. The Mercantile’s staff is just five people, but some of its programs draw hundreds of patrons.
In San Francisco, another membership library follows a similar ethos. “We don’t try to compete with the public library,” says Deb Hunt, director of the Mechanics’ Institute Library. “We want to be the cultural center for the bay area.” And what they specialize in is community, as evidenced by the high librarian-patron ratio and the legendary Tuesday night chess marathons.
The Mechanics’ Institute was founded in 1854 and has been in its current building since 1910—owning a prime piece of San Francisco real estate definitely helps their budget. Now the library has about 4,600 members, but before the 1906 earthquake it peaked at more than 10,000.
Hunt is quick to point out the difference between private libraries and membership libraries. “A private library is exclusive—you have to be recommended, and the bar is very high,” with initiation fees in the thousands of dollars, she says. Her library costs just $95 a year to join. “We feel it’s very democratic.” In November, the Mechanics’ Institute Library will host the fourth international conference of independent and member libraries, the first held in the United States. And although most membership libraries were created before the 20th century, one more has just sprouted in Washington: Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum opened its doors this month.
The low barrier to entry makes me wonder why membership libraries remain such well-kept secrets, but the Mechanics’ Institute’s demographics are getting younger, as are the Mercantile Library’s. “We kind of appeal to younger people in a way I didn’t anticipate. We are so authentic. And we’re not like purposefully authentic—we’re not ironically or contrived authentic. We’re just authentic. And I think that appeals to people. It appeals to me,” Faherty says. “The world can feel like a contrivance. This place is anything but.”
You can follow Grace on Twitter at @GraceDobushToGo. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
Source: Quartz
Monday, February 1, 2016
The Globe and Mail: Wonder of Thunder Bay: Look Inside a Gallery of Overlooked Books
Wonder of Thunder Bay: Look inside a gallery of overlooked books
A shop specializing in ‘nutbar’ titles is a national treasure waiting to be found – or lost forever
By Mark Medley, The Globe and Mail books editor
January 26, 2016
Before it became “the grotto shrine to the fetish object formerly known as the book,” as it’s often described by its unlikely proprietor, Letters Bookshop was a karate dojo, of all things. The store is located on a desolate strip in a sketchy part of Thunder Bay, across the street from a bakery and the train tracks. From the sidewalk it appears to be abandoned, the kind of shuttered business blighting small towns all over the country; the windows have been boarded up, although an attentive passerby might notice the plywood has been painted with scenes from the prehistoric Lascaux cave walls in France – some of humankind’s earliest stories. There’s little indication that what may be Canada’s most unusual collection of books is housed inside, carefully curated, over the course of five decades, by one of the more unusual personalities the Canadian book trade has ever produced.
What’s most fascinating about Nicky Drumbolis and his one-of-a-kind collection isn’t its value, which he estimates is in the millions, or its size – although it includes roughly 50,000 titles, and fills the building, floor to ceiling – but the focus. He has devoted a great portion of his life and livelihood to work that, as he describes it, “slips through the cracks.” Pamphlets and hand-sewn chapbooks that were produced in minuscule print runs; novels and poetry collections published by the most obscure of presses; the work of authors whose names the world has forgotten, if it ever knew them.
Mr. Drumbolis describes himself, as do many others, as an outsider, and he has devoted himself to the literary equivalents. Walking into his bookstore is to be exposed to an alternate history of publishing, one in which the likes of Blew Ointment Press and Ganglia and grOnk are just as celebrated as McClelland & Stewart or Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“He’s a remarkable person,” says Anne Dondertman, director of the world-renowned Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. “You have to admire someone who’s that single-minded. He’s given up everything to do this.”
His is a collection “that only speaks to people who are interested in the obscure, the oblique, the esoteric,” Mr. Drumbolis says. “There never was and there never will be” another like it – which is why its fate is of interest to so many, from authors to fellow booksellers to librarians, who understand its importance to our collective cultural history.
They also wonder how it can be saved from being dismantled, or, worse, winding up as landfill – considering that Mr. Drumbolis was forced to retreat north in a last-ditch bid to preserve his life’s work, a tactic he now fears has only delayed the inevitable, as there is no white knight in sight.
Besides being a bookseller and de facto literary conservationist, Mr. Drumbolis is a historian, writer, editor, bookbinder, gallerist, typographer, detective and storyteller, who claims he’ll “talk forever if you want to listen.” But he doesn’t get many opportunities these days; since moving here from Toronto, he estimates, no more than 50 people have stepped inside the store he purchased five years ago this month. Letters Bookshop is like a treasure buried just below the surface, either waiting to be found – or lost forever.
‘I’VE NEVER OWNED ANYTHING IN MY LIFE EXCEPT BOOKS’
A little more than a year ago, I ran into Nick Mount, who teaches English at the University of Toronto and is writing a book about Canadian literature in the 1960s. I asked how research was going. He’d just returned from Thunder Bay, he said. Did I know Nicky Drumbolis?
I remembered his small, crowded store in Parkdale, in Toronto’s west end, where the aisles were so tight in places you could barely squeeze by, with boxes upon boxes wedged three and four rows deep. But like many second-hand antiquarian bookstores in the city, it had disappeared, and I figured he was out of the business. Prof. Mount smiled when I said this, and his eyes grew wide. Mr. Drumbolis was still very much in business, he said.
Nine months later, I was in the home of the Sleeping Giant.
Although he doesn’t own a car, and had repeatedly been told I’d gladly take a cab, Mr. Drumbolis is waiting for me at the airport, waving a copy of Crad Kilodney’s Sex Slaves of the Astro-Mutants over his head like a welcome banner. (Mr. Kilodney, who died in 2014, was best known for selling his self-published books on the streets of Toronto – exactly the sort of author Mr. Drumbolis has championed.)
He is 67 but looks a decade younger, and is wearing a black fleece jacket over a blue T-shirt, baggy black jeans, black sneakers and a black beret with “Euskal Herria” embroidered on one side. (It’s what the Basques call their homeland and he’s Greek.) His goatee is more salt than pepper, and he wears his hair in a ponytail that falls to his shoulders.
On the bus ride downtown, he tells me about his move to Thunder Bay in 2011. He grudgingly returned to his hometown after being priced out of Toronto, an increasingly common fate for booksellers. He searched the province for suitable alternate digs, from Wingham, a few hours outside Toronto, to tiny Red Lake, several hours north of here. “I didn’t care where I lived,” he says. “As long as it had a beer store and a post office, I was cool.”
A friend loaned him $70,000 to cover the cost of the building ($45,000) and the move. It’s the first place he has been able to call his own: “I’ve never owned anything in my life except books.”
A lot of books. It took him a year to box them up for the move. Charlie Huisken, former co-owner of This Ain’t The Rosedale Library, the iconic independent bookstore, recalls coming out one weekend with other members of Toronto’s literary community to help pack up the store and the contents of a dozen-odd storage units Mr. Drumbolis had filled over the years: “There was so much stuff that the trailer was starting to rest on the tires rather than on the suspension.”
Once everything had been shifted 1,400 kilometres to Northwestern Ontario – courtesy of two big trucks, one an 18-wheeler – Mr. Drumbolis needed a year to unpack, and then, once he’d built the shelves, another year to organize the collection. The Parkdale store, at 77 Florence St. (also near the train tracks), had soaring 14-foot ceilings but only about 500 square feet of space; he now has more than 3,000 square feet devoted to books, although even this “is hardly big enough.” There are still boxes on top of almost every bookshelf, and the old dojo change rooms are now devoted to overflow. The building has no basement and rests on stilts; Mr. Drumbolis wasn’t sure it would support everything, so he consulted an engineer and researched how best to distribute the weight. He now figures it will hold. The roof needs replacing, though.
It wasn’t always a dojo; the building dates from the early 20th century, and in past lives has been a general store and a post office. An imposing black safe from the period sits in the front room, near the entrance, as does a glass counter that used to tempt the neighbourhood children with candy but now tempts me with a copy, among the many books on display, of Gregory Corso’s first major collection, Gasoline, which happens to be inscribed to the Beat poet’s friend, Allen Ginsberg, who wrote the introduction and signed it as well.
“Johnny Depp collects Beat stuff, right?” asks Mr. Drumbolis. “If he wants it for seventy-five hundred beans, I’ll fly over and put it in his back pocket for him.”
The shop is, in fact, four connected buildings. The book collection, divided into various categories, takes up the front half, along with a small workroom for repairs, a bathroom and storage space. The back half has been turned into an apartment, with a modest kitchen, bathroom, a personal research library and office, and two bedrooms, one of which is devoted to the books he has written and published under his own imprint, and where he sleeps on an air mattress.
He describes Letters both as a “shrine” and a “museum,” and it’s hard to argue with him; it’s unlike any bookstore I’ve ever visited.
‘A CONTRIBUTIVE BOOKSELLER’
Nicky Drumbolis says his life has been “a novel, not a story.” If that’s the case, the prologue begins just across the street. Outside the store, he points east, to an overgrown lot beyond the rail tracks where a two-storey house once stood – and his father was born. His life, in a way, has come full circle.
The path to becoming “probably the most remarkable bookseller Canada has produced,” as Toronto rare-book dealer David Mason called Mr. Drumbolis in his 2013 memoir, The Pope’s Bookbinder, actually started across town. He was born in Port Arthur (amalgamated with Fort William in 1970 to form Thunder Bay), the oldest of six children. Despite being selected for a city-wide advanced-learning program, he didn’t finish high school, and even though he later managed to enroll at both Lakehead and York, he didn’t finish university, either.
“My education was largely one at rummage sales,” he says. “I’d find a book and go, ‘This looks neat,’ and I’d take it home and read it. And I particularly loved nutbar books.”
His life has been immersed in “nutbar” books – books that struggle to find a readership, that don’t appear on bestseller lists, that are overlooked for awards, that most people have never heard of. He has spent his bookselling career trying to introduce these works to a larger audience, trying to salvage them from the remainder bin that is time, and, if no one is interested at the moment, ensuring at least one copy survives, just in case a future reader stumbles across it, as he did, and finds some kind of joy. “It’s bringing these people back to life,” he says.
By the mid-1970s, Mr. Drumbolis was living in Toronto, where he managed a successive string of second-hand bookshops around the city, including Olympia Books, on a seedy strip of Yonge Street, where he was first introduced to the rare and antiquarian trade; and the adult-oriented Reid’s Bookstore, also on Yonge Street, where, after being hired, he “started writing [small-press publishers] around North America,” imploring them to send their newest titles.
Some publishers were perplexed. “I thought it was a strange place to sell this stuff,” recalls Marty Gervais, who had founded the influential Black Moss Press in 1969, and would drive up from Windsor, Ont., with a carload of chapbooks and literary magazines to drop off. “Right beside a vast array of grotesquely large dildos was the poetry I was publishing by the likes of bpNichol and Al Purdy. It made me wonder what his clientele was taking home with them. Living out their sexual fantasies alongside lyrical recitations, maybe?” (According to Mr. Drumbolis, “all that stuff sold. Why? Because these people would come in to buy porno and then they’d always take something to cover it up!”)
The first of his own stores, Acme Book, opened in 1978 in the west-end Toronto apartment he shared with his wife, Susan Fritz, the same year he co-founded a magazine-distribution company. He’d drive down to New York to pick up porn, but also avant-garde literature and underground magazines – he says he was the first to bring Art Spiegelman’s Raw to Canada. Those trips served a dual purpose: “On the way back, I’d stop in every fucking small town and scout rare books.”
In 1982, the first incarnation of Letters opened on the strip of Queen Street West once known as “booksellers’ row,” where up to 20 bookstores operated at any given time. It was the golden age of bookselling in Toronto, although Mr. Drumbolis set himself apart from his colleagues, as he still does.
“There’s two types of booksellers,” he says. “There’s the distributive bookseller – the guy who just sells whatever he can fucking get – and then there’s the contributive bookseller, which is me, who emplaces the kind of book that I think needs to be read.
“As a contributive bookseller, the important thing I felt that a bookstore ought to represent was a depot for the work, a hostel to house people if they needed it – a place to crash or a place to come and hang out – and then a forum, a place where they could exchange ideas.”
Letters was all these things. It was somewhere that writers could hold readings, “basically to give these people a forum where they were at the centre,” he says. It was a gallery, with display cases housing the best in what Mr. Drumbolis terms “the book arts.” It was a publishing house, with him releasing his own work (often using the pseudonym Arthur Cravan, a nod to the Swiss Surrealist poet) and that of other writers he admired under the Letters imprint. It served as a crash pad, not only for writers but for Mr. Drumbolis himself, who slept in a sleeping bag in a back room after his marriage dissolved.
And, perhaps most important, it was a bookstore that was decidedly democratic in how the shelves were stocked – he’d sell almost any book that he deemed worthy. “It wasn’t a cabinet of curiosities, but a collection of literary wonders,” says Mr. Huisken. “It wasn’t just an accumulation, it was a creation.”
There’s a photo of the old store at 452E Queen St. W., a modest three-storey brick building, with the front window full of what looks to be chapbooks and the front door almost entirely papered over with posters. Mr. Drumbolis stands out front, wearing oversized glasses and a multicoloured checkered sweater, his hands jammed in his front pockets, a thin smile on his lips. It dates from 1988, and was taken by Stan Bevington, a friend and the founder of Coach House Books, perhaps the most important publisher to emerge from the Canadian small-press boom of the sixties and seventies.
The following year, rising rents prompted Mr. Drumbolis to move to Florence Street and take a job with Coach House, where he worked as a bookbinder, off and on, for the next two decades. “Everyone,” he says, “saw me as a binder at Coach House, a menial, and didn’t know I still had the store.”
Mr. Gervais recalls visiting the stop late one night, and being shown early Black Moss titles, some of which he’d likely dropped off amid the sex toys and porno mags years before.
“It was so neat, just being in this place, really quiet at night, and there he is, living in and among his own collection. Many of us have a love for our work, but we go home, as well. But his home was where his books were.”
‘I HATE MY EXISTENCE UP HERE’
And yet his new home isn’t such a happy one. Almost no one in Thunder Bay – almost no one in Canada – knows what he is doing.
“I hate my existence up here,” he says. “It’s done a number on my soul and, believe me, I don’t believe in souls.” He’s lonely, bemoans the lack of good coffee shops and the fact he’s so far away from his friends, that he can’t go out any given night to a poetry reading. He’s angry, frankly, that he had to leave in the first place.
“Toronto lost a huge resource,” he says. “I resented the fact that there wasn’t enough space on the postage stamp for just one more little guy. So I’ve got to play out the string up here.”
Living on a modest pension (he has repaid all of the $70,000 loan), he spends his days working on his own books, which range wildly in subject matter from lunar iconography to Shakespeare, and which he uploads online, and researching the titles in his collection. “Every book has a story,” he says, and he’s driven, in part, by finding out what the story is and then sharing it with the world.
Mr. Bevington describes the store as “a retirement home for books,” which is probably the most accurate description I’ve heard. The 50,000 or so volumes it houses don’t include the impressive array of art and publishing ephemera Mr. Drumbolis has accumulated. And for the first time, all his books are out on display, which makes the fact that hardly anyone has seen them that much more depressing.
An extremely rare vintage Dada poster for the first and only public gathering of the Dadaists.
“All of this is my memory,” Mr. Drombolis says. “Every single thing in here has some memorable factor about it, and every piece in here was scavenged from some experience. And that experience is still pregnant in these things. This is all the inside of my head, in a way.”
Walking through the store is an overwhelming experience. Everywhere I look I spot something I’ve never seen before and will probably never see again. I could have picked a single shelf of a single bookcase and spent my entire visit studying its contents. Not that Mr. Drumbolis would have let me do that. As we amble up and down the aisles, he is constantly narrating, constantly picking out items at random and telling their story – how he acquired it, or who published it, or whatever happened to its author – which often leads into another, entirely different story, and another book, and so on, until I can’t remember which book started the conversation in the first place.
He throws around words like “shit kicker” or “heavyweight” to describe books he particularly loves, his voice growing progressively louder and more animated, the longer he talks. He pulls out a first edition of Leonard Cohen’s 1956 debut Let Us Compare Mythologies, part of what is probably the most extensive sampling in existence of Montreal’s legendary Contact Press, which helped to launch Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Raymond Souster and others. Now here’s his Franz Kafka collection, and over here Ezra Pound, and Charles Bukowski, and a few remaining titles from his collection of William S. Burroughs, most of which he sold years ago to David Cronenberg around the time the director was adapting the Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch.
“Henry James,” he says, tapping a shelf filled with first editions of the American master. “The guy I wanted to read cover to cover before I died. I don’t think I’ll get to it now.”
His words are tinged with melancholy, not just about James, I think, but about the whole store. After spending a lifetime collecting and preserving these books, there’s not enough time in the world to actually enjoy them, let alone sell them. “I’m going to die with more shit than I’m going to fucking sell,” he tells me. When I spot a first edition of Joe Gould’s Secret, Joseph Mitchell’s 1965 book about a man who spent his life working on an oral history of the modern world, I can’t help but draw a line between the Greenwich Village writer and this Thunder Bay bookseller.
At one point he stops, mid-sentence, and looks around, in what seems like awe. “I have so much shit,” he says, as if to himself.
Part of the reason is that he just doesn’t sell many books, at least not any more.
“He’s sold everything he’s ever sold reluctantly,” says Mr. Mason. “Try and buy a book from him. It’s not going to work.”
Prof. Mount gave it a shot, and was rebuffed – but in the end was given one for free. I was sent home with a suitcase filled with books, too, despite the fact I hadn’t asked for any.
For instance, his Queen Street store featured a lending library. He can rattle off titles borrowed years ago and never returned, or titles that came back not in the same condition as when they left. He shows off a first-edition copy of In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, a short-story collection by William Gass; it’s stained with what looks like tea, returned that way, he says, by literary icon Alice Munro, once a regular customer. “This was a rare book,” he says.
He describes himself as a “cultural mediator” who is “simply a custodian of a shared resource.”
“I don’t see all of this as ‘mine’ or ‘yours.’ I see this as ‘ours.’ This is history,” he says. “I have temporary custody of the book. That’s all. It’s going to be here after I’m dead.”
Or will it?
Mr. Drumbolis: ‘My education was largely one at rummage sales. I’d find a book and go, “This looks neat,” and I’d take it home and read it. And I particularly loved nutbar books.’
‘WHEN I DROP DEAD … IT’S GOING TO GO TO THE SALLY ANN’
I was in Thunder Bay for two days, sleeping overnight at the store and speaking to more than a dozen of Mr. Drumbolis’s friends and acquaintances. In every conversation, the question as to what will happen to these books was just below the surface. Mr. Drumbolis, for his part, refers to the store as his “tomb.” The priority is to ensure the books aren’t buried with him.
“It scares the hell out of me thinking about it, because the word ‘landfill’ keeps coming up,” says Steven Temple, a rare-book dealer based in Welland, Ont.
“It should be preserved somewhere, somehow,” says John W. Curry, an Ottawa avant-garde poet (as jwcurry) and friend whose small-press collection is one of the few to rival that of Mr. Drumbolis. “There is not another repository like that. It should probably just be turned into a museum.”
Mr. Drumbolis: 'I don’t see all of this as "mine" or "yours." I see this as ours. This is history.'
Says Mr. Huisken, “What we have to do is create an institution to take care of that collection. It’s not going to happen on its own.”
Mr. Drumbolis has a daughter, a social worker in Sudbury, but doesn’t want to burden her. Part of the problem, he says, is that “it’s now up in Thunder Bay where, when I drop dead of an aneurysm, it’s going to go to the Sally Ann.
“I held onto this stuff, to the detriment of my health, against all odds, in the hopes of seeing it go somewhere,” he says. “Nobody wants it, at any cost.”
It’s more complicated than that. Ms. Dondertman, of the Fisher library, says part of the problem is the size of the collection. “There aren’t a lot of libraries who can cope with those numbers, no matter what the books are,” she says. “It’s a huge, huge challenge.”
Mr. Mason maintains that it “won’t end up in the dump. There are now enough people in the book trade who know how important what he has is, that that will not be allowed to happen.”
That said, what the shop contains “is less than what he has in his head, which is the part that’s going to disappear, sadly,” says Mr. Bevington. “I don’t think that there’s any way that you can collect the amount of information that he has in his head.”
Poet Cameron Anstee agrees. “It’s not just that he has books no one has, but he knows things about those books that no one else knows. The amount of knowledge that he possesses as a result of his life’s work – it’s not really reproducible.
“Whoever picks up that tradition from him, it’s going to be a huge task,” adds Mr. Anstee, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa writing about postwar bookselling in Canada. “A hugely important task.”
‘WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT THIS PLACE?’
On my second morning in Thunder Bay, while drinking lukewarm coffee at his kitchen table, Mr. Drumbolis asks me a question I’ve been trying to answer ever since: “If I died, what would you say about this place?”
The best answer, I think, is found in 77 Florence, a poem in Phil Hall’s 2011 Governor-General’s Award-winning collection, Killdeer, inspired by the store “where pilgrims arrive in bewilderment.”
This is what Mr. Hall sees when he looks at what Mr. Drumbolis has accomplished:
A shop specializing in ‘nutbar’ titles is a national treasure waiting to be found – or lost forever
By Mark Medley, The Globe and Mail books editor
January 26, 2016
Before it became “the grotto shrine to the fetish object formerly known as the book,” as it’s often described by its unlikely proprietor, Letters Bookshop was a karate dojo, of all things. The store is located on a desolate strip in a sketchy part of Thunder Bay, across the street from a bakery and the train tracks. From the sidewalk it appears to be abandoned, the kind of shuttered business blighting small towns all over the country; the windows have been boarded up, although an attentive passerby might notice the plywood has been painted with scenes from the prehistoric Lascaux cave walls in France – some of humankind’s earliest stories. There’s little indication that what may be Canada’s most unusual collection of books is housed inside, carefully curated, over the course of five decades, by one of the more unusual personalities the Canadian book trade has ever produced.
What’s most fascinating about Nicky Drumbolis and his one-of-a-kind collection isn’t its value, which he estimates is in the millions, or its size – although it includes roughly 50,000 titles, and fills the building, floor to ceiling – but the focus. He has devoted a great portion of his life and livelihood to work that, as he describes it, “slips through the cracks.” Pamphlets and hand-sewn chapbooks that were produced in minuscule print runs; novels and poetry collections published by the most obscure of presses; the work of authors whose names the world has forgotten, if it ever knew them.
Mr. Drumbolis describes himself, as do many others, as an outsider, and he has devoted himself to the literary equivalents. Walking into his bookstore is to be exposed to an alternate history of publishing, one in which the likes of Blew Ointment Press and Ganglia and grOnk are just as celebrated as McClelland & Stewart or Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“He’s a remarkable person,” says Anne Dondertman, director of the world-renowned Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. “You have to admire someone who’s that single-minded. He’s given up everything to do this.”
His is a collection “that only speaks to people who are interested in the obscure, the oblique, the esoteric,” Mr. Drumbolis says. “There never was and there never will be” another like it – which is why its fate is of interest to so many, from authors to fellow booksellers to librarians, who understand its importance to our collective cultural history.
They also wonder how it can be saved from being dismantled, or, worse, winding up as landfill – considering that Mr. Drumbolis was forced to retreat north in a last-ditch bid to preserve his life’s work, a tactic he now fears has only delayed the inevitable, as there is no white knight in sight.
Besides being a bookseller and de facto literary conservationist, Mr. Drumbolis is a historian, writer, editor, bookbinder, gallerist, typographer, detective and storyteller, who claims he’ll “talk forever if you want to listen.” But he doesn’t get many opportunities these days; since moving here from Toronto, he estimates, no more than 50 people have stepped inside the store he purchased five years ago this month. Letters Bookshop is like a treasure buried just below the surface, either waiting to be found – or lost forever.
‘I’VE NEVER OWNED ANYTHING IN MY LIFE EXCEPT BOOKS’
A little more than a year ago, I ran into Nick Mount, who teaches English at the University of Toronto and is writing a book about Canadian literature in the 1960s. I asked how research was going. He’d just returned from Thunder Bay, he said. Did I know Nicky Drumbolis?
I remembered his small, crowded store in Parkdale, in Toronto’s west end, where the aisles were so tight in places you could barely squeeze by, with boxes upon boxes wedged three and four rows deep. But like many second-hand antiquarian bookstores in the city, it had disappeared, and I figured he was out of the business. Prof. Mount smiled when I said this, and his eyes grew wide. Mr. Drumbolis was still very much in business, he said.
Nine months later, I was in the home of the Sleeping Giant.
Although he doesn’t own a car, and had repeatedly been told I’d gladly take a cab, Mr. Drumbolis is waiting for me at the airport, waving a copy of Crad Kilodney’s Sex Slaves of the Astro-Mutants over his head like a welcome banner. (Mr. Kilodney, who died in 2014, was best known for selling his self-published books on the streets of Toronto – exactly the sort of author Mr. Drumbolis has championed.)
He is 67 but looks a decade younger, and is wearing a black fleece jacket over a blue T-shirt, baggy black jeans, black sneakers and a black beret with “Euskal Herria” embroidered on one side. (It’s what the Basques call their homeland and he’s Greek.) His goatee is more salt than pepper, and he wears his hair in a ponytail that falls to his shoulders.
On the bus ride downtown, he tells me about his move to Thunder Bay in 2011. He grudgingly returned to his hometown after being priced out of Toronto, an increasingly common fate for booksellers. He searched the province for suitable alternate digs, from Wingham, a few hours outside Toronto, to tiny Red Lake, several hours north of here. “I didn’t care where I lived,” he says. “As long as it had a beer store and a post office, I was cool.”
A friend loaned him $70,000 to cover the cost of the building ($45,000) and the move. It’s the first place he has been able to call his own: “I’ve never owned anything in my life except books.”
A lot of books. It took him a year to box them up for the move. Charlie Huisken, former co-owner of This Ain’t The Rosedale Library, the iconic independent bookstore, recalls coming out one weekend with other members of Toronto’s literary community to help pack up the store and the contents of a dozen-odd storage units Mr. Drumbolis had filled over the years: “There was so much stuff that the trailer was starting to rest on the tires rather than on the suspension.”
Once everything had been shifted 1,400 kilometres to Northwestern Ontario – courtesy of two big trucks, one an 18-wheeler – Mr. Drumbolis needed a year to unpack, and then, once he’d built the shelves, another year to organize the collection. The Parkdale store, at 77 Florence St. (also near the train tracks), had soaring 14-foot ceilings but only about 500 square feet of space; he now has more than 3,000 square feet devoted to books, although even this “is hardly big enough.” There are still boxes on top of almost every bookshelf, and the old dojo change rooms are now devoted to overflow. The building has no basement and rests on stilts; Mr. Drumbolis wasn’t sure it would support everything, so he consulted an engineer and researched how best to distribute the weight. He now figures it will hold. The roof needs replacing, though.
It wasn’t always a dojo; the building dates from the early 20th century, and in past lives has been a general store and a post office. An imposing black safe from the period sits in the front room, near the entrance, as does a glass counter that used to tempt the neighbourhood children with candy but now tempts me with a copy, among the many books on display, of Gregory Corso’s first major collection, Gasoline, which happens to be inscribed to the Beat poet’s friend, Allen Ginsberg, who wrote the introduction and signed it as well.
“Johnny Depp collects Beat stuff, right?” asks Mr. Drumbolis. “If he wants it for seventy-five hundred beans, I’ll fly over and put it in his back pocket for him.”
The shop is, in fact, four connected buildings. The book collection, divided into various categories, takes up the front half, along with a small workroom for repairs, a bathroom and storage space. The back half has been turned into an apartment, with a modest kitchen, bathroom, a personal research library and office, and two bedrooms, one of which is devoted to the books he has written and published under his own imprint, and where he sleeps on an air mattress.
He describes Letters both as a “shrine” and a “museum,” and it’s hard to argue with him; it’s unlike any bookstore I’ve ever visited.
‘A CONTRIBUTIVE BOOKSELLER’
Nicky Drumbolis says his life has been “a novel, not a story.” If that’s the case, the prologue begins just across the street. Outside the store, he points east, to an overgrown lot beyond the rail tracks where a two-storey house once stood – and his father was born. His life, in a way, has come full circle.
The path to becoming “probably the most remarkable bookseller Canada has produced,” as Toronto rare-book dealer David Mason called Mr. Drumbolis in his 2013 memoir, The Pope’s Bookbinder, actually started across town. He was born in Port Arthur (amalgamated with Fort William in 1970 to form Thunder Bay), the oldest of six children. Despite being selected for a city-wide advanced-learning program, he didn’t finish high school, and even though he later managed to enroll at both Lakehead and York, he didn’t finish university, either.
“My education was largely one at rummage sales,” he says. “I’d find a book and go, ‘This looks neat,’ and I’d take it home and read it. And I particularly loved nutbar books.”
His life has been immersed in “nutbar” books – books that struggle to find a readership, that don’t appear on bestseller lists, that are overlooked for awards, that most people have never heard of. He has spent his bookselling career trying to introduce these works to a larger audience, trying to salvage them from the remainder bin that is time, and, if no one is interested at the moment, ensuring at least one copy survives, just in case a future reader stumbles across it, as he did, and finds some kind of joy. “It’s bringing these people back to life,” he says.
By the mid-1970s, Mr. Drumbolis was living in Toronto, where he managed a successive string of second-hand bookshops around the city, including Olympia Books, on a seedy strip of Yonge Street, where he was first introduced to the rare and antiquarian trade; and the adult-oriented Reid’s Bookstore, also on Yonge Street, where, after being hired, he “started writing [small-press publishers] around North America,” imploring them to send their newest titles.
Some publishers were perplexed. “I thought it was a strange place to sell this stuff,” recalls Marty Gervais, who had founded the influential Black Moss Press in 1969, and would drive up from Windsor, Ont., with a carload of chapbooks and literary magazines to drop off. “Right beside a vast array of grotesquely large dildos was the poetry I was publishing by the likes of bpNichol and Al Purdy. It made me wonder what his clientele was taking home with them. Living out their sexual fantasies alongside lyrical recitations, maybe?” (According to Mr. Drumbolis, “all that stuff sold. Why? Because these people would come in to buy porno and then they’d always take something to cover it up!”)
The first of his own stores, Acme Book, opened in 1978 in the west-end Toronto apartment he shared with his wife, Susan Fritz, the same year he co-founded a magazine-distribution company. He’d drive down to New York to pick up porn, but also avant-garde literature and underground magazines – he says he was the first to bring Art Spiegelman’s Raw to Canada. Those trips served a dual purpose: “On the way back, I’d stop in every fucking small town and scout rare books.”
In 1982, the first incarnation of Letters opened on the strip of Queen Street West once known as “booksellers’ row,” where up to 20 bookstores operated at any given time. It was the golden age of bookselling in Toronto, although Mr. Drumbolis set himself apart from his colleagues, as he still does.
“There’s two types of booksellers,” he says. “There’s the distributive bookseller – the guy who just sells whatever he can fucking get – and then there’s the contributive bookseller, which is me, who emplaces the kind of book that I think needs to be read.
“As a contributive bookseller, the important thing I felt that a bookstore ought to represent was a depot for the work, a hostel to house people if they needed it – a place to crash or a place to come and hang out – and then a forum, a place where they could exchange ideas.”
Letters was all these things. It was somewhere that writers could hold readings, “basically to give these people a forum where they were at the centre,” he says. It was a gallery, with display cases housing the best in what Mr. Drumbolis terms “the book arts.” It was a publishing house, with him releasing his own work (often using the pseudonym Arthur Cravan, a nod to the Swiss Surrealist poet) and that of other writers he admired under the Letters imprint. It served as a crash pad, not only for writers but for Mr. Drumbolis himself, who slept in a sleeping bag in a back room after his marriage dissolved.
And, perhaps most important, it was a bookstore that was decidedly democratic in how the shelves were stocked – he’d sell almost any book that he deemed worthy. “It wasn’t a cabinet of curiosities, but a collection of literary wonders,” says Mr. Huisken. “It wasn’t just an accumulation, it was a creation.”
There’s a photo of the old store at 452E Queen St. W., a modest three-storey brick building, with the front window full of what looks to be chapbooks and the front door almost entirely papered over with posters. Mr. Drumbolis stands out front, wearing oversized glasses and a multicoloured checkered sweater, his hands jammed in his front pockets, a thin smile on his lips. It dates from 1988, and was taken by Stan Bevington, a friend and the founder of Coach House Books, perhaps the most important publisher to emerge from the Canadian small-press boom of the sixties and seventies.
The following year, rising rents prompted Mr. Drumbolis to move to Florence Street and take a job with Coach House, where he worked as a bookbinder, off and on, for the next two decades. “Everyone,” he says, “saw me as a binder at Coach House, a menial, and didn’t know I still had the store.”
Mr. Gervais recalls visiting the stop late one night, and being shown early Black Moss titles, some of which he’d likely dropped off amid the sex toys and porno mags years before.
“It was so neat, just being in this place, really quiet at night, and there he is, living in and among his own collection. Many of us have a love for our work, but we go home, as well. But his home was where his books were.”
‘I HATE MY EXISTENCE UP HERE’
And yet his new home isn’t such a happy one. Almost no one in Thunder Bay – almost no one in Canada – knows what he is doing.
“I hate my existence up here,” he says. “It’s done a number on my soul and, believe me, I don’t believe in souls.” He’s lonely, bemoans the lack of good coffee shops and the fact he’s so far away from his friends, that he can’t go out any given night to a poetry reading. He’s angry, frankly, that he had to leave in the first place.
“Toronto lost a huge resource,” he says. “I resented the fact that there wasn’t enough space on the postage stamp for just one more little guy. So I’ve got to play out the string up here.”
Living on a modest pension (he has repaid all of the $70,000 loan), he spends his days working on his own books, which range wildly in subject matter from lunar iconography to Shakespeare, and which he uploads online, and researching the titles in his collection. “Every book has a story,” he says, and he’s driven, in part, by finding out what the story is and then sharing it with the world.
Mr. Bevington describes the store as “a retirement home for books,” which is probably the most accurate description I’ve heard. The 50,000 or so volumes it houses don’t include the impressive array of art and publishing ephemera Mr. Drumbolis has accumulated. And for the first time, all his books are out on display, which makes the fact that hardly anyone has seen them that much more depressing.
An extremely rare vintage Dada poster for the first and only public gathering of the Dadaists.
“All of this is my memory,” Mr. Drombolis says. “Every single thing in here has some memorable factor about it, and every piece in here was scavenged from some experience. And that experience is still pregnant in these things. This is all the inside of my head, in a way.”
Walking through the store is an overwhelming experience. Everywhere I look I spot something I’ve never seen before and will probably never see again. I could have picked a single shelf of a single bookcase and spent my entire visit studying its contents. Not that Mr. Drumbolis would have let me do that. As we amble up and down the aisles, he is constantly narrating, constantly picking out items at random and telling their story – how he acquired it, or who published it, or whatever happened to its author – which often leads into another, entirely different story, and another book, and so on, until I can’t remember which book started the conversation in the first place.
He throws around words like “shit kicker” or “heavyweight” to describe books he particularly loves, his voice growing progressively louder and more animated, the longer he talks. He pulls out a first edition of Leonard Cohen’s 1956 debut Let Us Compare Mythologies, part of what is probably the most extensive sampling in existence of Montreal’s legendary Contact Press, which helped to launch Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Raymond Souster and others. Now here’s his Franz Kafka collection, and over here Ezra Pound, and Charles Bukowski, and a few remaining titles from his collection of William S. Burroughs, most of which he sold years ago to David Cronenberg around the time the director was adapting the Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch.
“Henry James,” he says, tapping a shelf filled with first editions of the American master. “The guy I wanted to read cover to cover before I died. I don’t think I’ll get to it now.”
His words are tinged with melancholy, not just about James, I think, but about the whole store. After spending a lifetime collecting and preserving these books, there’s not enough time in the world to actually enjoy them, let alone sell them. “I’m going to die with more shit than I’m going to fucking sell,” he tells me. When I spot a first edition of Joe Gould’s Secret, Joseph Mitchell’s 1965 book about a man who spent his life working on an oral history of the modern world, I can’t help but draw a line between the Greenwich Village writer and this Thunder Bay bookseller.
At one point he stops, mid-sentence, and looks around, in what seems like awe. “I have so much shit,” he says, as if to himself.
Part of the reason is that he just doesn’t sell many books, at least not any more.
“He’s sold everything he’s ever sold reluctantly,” says Mr. Mason. “Try and buy a book from him. It’s not going to work.”
Prof. Mount gave it a shot, and was rebuffed – but in the end was given one for free. I was sent home with a suitcase filled with books, too, despite the fact I hadn’t asked for any.
For instance, his Queen Street store featured a lending library. He can rattle off titles borrowed years ago and never returned, or titles that came back not in the same condition as when they left. He shows off a first-edition copy of In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, a short-story collection by William Gass; it’s stained with what looks like tea, returned that way, he says, by literary icon Alice Munro, once a regular customer. “This was a rare book,” he says.
He describes himself as a “cultural mediator” who is “simply a custodian of a shared resource.”
“I don’t see all of this as ‘mine’ or ‘yours.’ I see this as ‘ours.’ This is history,” he says. “I have temporary custody of the book. That’s all. It’s going to be here after I’m dead.”
Or will it?
Mr. Drumbolis: ‘My education was largely one at rummage sales. I’d find a book and go, “This looks neat,” and I’d take it home and read it. And I particularly loved nutbar books.’
‘WHEN I DROP DEAD … IT’S GOING TO GO TO THE SALLY ANN’
I was in Thunder Bay for two days, sleeping overnight at the store and speaking to more than a dozen of Mr. Drumbolis’s friends and acquaintances. In every conversation, the question as to what will happen to these books was just below the surface. Mr. Drumbolis, for his part, refers to the store as his “tomb.” The priority is to ensure the books aren’t buried with him.
“It scares the hell out of me thinking about it, because the word ‘landfill’ keeps coming up,” says Steven Temple, a rare-book dealer based in Welland, Ont.
“It should be preserved somewhere, somehow,” says John W. Curry, an Ottawa avant-garde poet (as jwcurry) and friend whose small-press collection is one of the few to rival that of Mr. Drumbolis. “There is not another repository like that. It should probably just be turned into a museum.”
Mr. Drumbolis: 'I don’t see all of this as "mine" or "yours." I see this as ours. This is history.'
Says Mr. Huisken, “What we have to do is create an institution to take care of that collection. It’s not going to happen on its own.”
Mr. Drumbolis has a daughter, a social worker in Sudbury, but doesn’t want to burden her. Part of the problem, he says, is that “it’s now up in Thunder Bay where, when I drop dead of an aneurysm, it’s going to go to the Sally Ann.
“I held onto this stuff, to the detriment of my health, against all odds, in the hopes of seeing it go somewhere,” he says. “Nobody wants it, at any cost.”
It’s more complicated than that. Ms. Dondertman, of the Fisher library, says part of the problem is the size of the collection. “There aren’t a lot of libraries who can cope with those numbers, no matter what the books are,” she says. “It’s a huge, huge challenge.”
Mr. Mason maintains that it “won’t end up in the dump. There are now enough people in the book trade who know how important what he has is, that that will not be allowed to happen.”
That said, what the shop contains “is less than what he has in his head, which is the part that’s going to disappear, sadly,” says Mr. Bevington. “I don’t think that there’s any way that you can collect the amount of information that he has in his head.”
Poet Cameron Anstee agrees. “It’s not just that he has books no one has, but he knows things about those books that no one else knows. The amount of knowledge that he possesses as a result of his life’s work – it’s not really reproducible.
“Whoever picks up that tradition from him, it’s going to be a huge task,” adds Mr. Anstee, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa writing about postwar bookselling in Canada. “A hugely important task.”
‘WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT THIS PLACE?’
On my second morning in Thunder Bay, while drinking lukewarm coffee at his kitchen table, Mr. Drumbolis asks me a question I’ve been trying to answer ever since: “If I died, what would you say about this place?”
The best answer, I think, is found in 77 Florence, a poem in Phil Hall’s 2011 Governor-General’s Award-winning collection, Killdeer, inspired by the store “where pilgrims arrive in bewilderment.”
This is what Mr. Hall sees when he looks at what Mr. Drumbolis has accomplished:
This recent April flames engulfed Baghdad’s National Library/ destroying manuscripts untold centuries oldSource: Globe and Mail
Almost nothing remains of that great library’s tens of thousands of/manuscripts – books – & Iraqi newspapers
In light of such atrocities – Drumbolis’s preservation instinct/ means – to catch the glowing ashes – & save them – so the world-/as-book can be – if not rebuilt – at least remembered – intensely
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