friend I'll never meet

[boxofdelights]

I use my library's "holds" system a lot. When an item I have put on hold comes in, the librarian prints a bookmark with my initials, sticks the bookmark in the item, and puts it on the "holds" shelf. Then I can pick it up and check it out without ever speaking to another human being.

Books that are on hold for different users with the same initials are all mixed together on the shelf. There must have been a lot of collisions during lockdown, when the only way to get physical objects from the library was through the holds system; but during lockdown it was up to the librarians to retrieve things from the shelf and check them out to you. In normal times, most people don't use the holds system that much.

But there is another user with the same initials as me who puts a lot of things on hold, and quite a few of her things are things I want to read, or have read and liked! (Sometimes I say "Huh?" or "Not worth the time" -- but maybe those holds belong to a third RSE!) This week, her holds were Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, and A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott. Last time they were Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich, The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris, and Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

I want to invite her to my book group!

Comments

[hobbitbabe]

In ours, what's visible on the hold shelves is a gently-stuck-on label with the first four letters of the surname. There's another MALL at our branch who reads manga. Years ago, one of my bookclub friends used the same branch. She's great at finding out about new releases from author blogs and getting on the hold lists early, so I took to checking out the holds under her first-four on the way to checking mine. Once I saw her code on a book that sounded like it would be hers, but I didn't have anything on me to leave a note with - so I just stuck one of my business cards in the book. And of course, all the way home I wondered what if it was someone else with that abbreviation, and I don't remember if she ever did notice the business card.

At some points in the pandemic, the branch was open for picking up holds and for the one shelf of new-and-recommended, and at other points it went to "library takeout", where you phone from outside and they run out with your holds and drop them on a table with a 2-m circle chalked around it. (There were workarounds for people without cell phones, of course). They still do takeout for people who prefer that, now, and they aren't doing proof-of-vaccine-required for entry because the library is an essential service like groceries.

[boxofdelights]

My library did "takeout", like yours, during lockdown, except that they had no workaround for people without cell phones. I thought about asking them why not, but I always decided they had enough on their plates.

[hobbitbabe]

My library's still doing the takeout for people who prefer it. I think the workaround options include calling before you leave home to give them your library card number and then ringing the bell when you get there, or just ringing the bell if you aren't able to do that.

My sister's library branch, in a fancy suburb in Ohio, already had a drive-through window before covid. She liked that when she had a toddler to wrangle.