beattitude: i currently have 44 books checked out and 20 on hold. guilt, check. anticipation, check. time to read these books? um. theconceptlibrarian: magicmolly:
Engaging with the New York Public Library taps into all sorts of unexpected economic anxieties and pleasures.
Ordering books online to be delivered to your local branch brings a feeling of great wealth. For example, figuring out how to nab brand-new books with minimal wait time is akin to having an endless credit line at Barnes & Noble, while picking up a stack of freshly-delivered oversized art books and rare scholarship is like winning access to an antiquarian’s private collection.
The feeling warps when you go home and log into your NYPL account to tally up the damage. This is when you see that you have 13 books checked out, and several are due within the week, and two of these cannot be renewed because someone else has ordered them. With this discovery comes a troubling sense of indebtedness.
There are two ways to respond: ignore the debt (while fighting back a tide of guilt) or quickly pile up all half-read or non-essential books and run back to the library to return them. Dumping an armload of books lightens the psychic load and provides a measure of relief when you check your account to see that this time you owe only 9 books, and these all have a solid two weeks before they begin to accrue fines.
Oddly enough, the logical extension of this method (returning all of your books at once and immediately) does not bring about feelings of relief, but rather feelings of poverty. With no books checked out, it becomes clear that you have nothing to lose but also nothing to gain.
A good balance is to have six books out and at least twelve books on hold, so that a sense of satiety (the six books) is matched with a sense of anticipation (the twelve books on hold) which combines to overshadow the lingering sense of debt embodied in your six homebound library books.
Q.E.D., I think.
Coffeehouse Junkie 