I miss when library books used to have little paper pockets inside with a list of all the people who borrowed it and when… I hate that this is now exclusive knowledge of librarians. I do care that a miss Mariana borrowed this book in 1985 and then Dario in 1997. They’re my brothers and sisters
but really, there’s a million reasons why it’s an issue for users and staff of the public library to have immediate access to a record of who has borrowed a specific item and when.
and that’s not even about keeping the information “privileged” to the library staff, these days they don’t even keep a digital record of an item’s history of borrowers; once you return a book, there isn’t a list of everyone thats ever taken that book out that your name gets added to (though they probably take a tally of how many times it is checked out for circulation statistics).
i think the card system is a remnant of a culture that could only exist in the world before the internet as it exists today, where this identifying kind of information wasn’t always readily at your fingertips, even for those at the “information professional” level.
don’t get me wrong here, i do understand the nostalgia factor to it as being part of a different time, but i think it’s always important to understand why this kind of system has its flaws and has been (at least in north america) taken out of practice
bear in mind that US public libraries spent most of the past twenty years fighting off lawsuits that they were prohibited from disclosing to the public because when 9/11 happened the federal government wanted a list of every person who read certain books and the librarians had a really bad feeling about where that kind of policy would end up going, for some reason.
not keeping the records in the first place is a way for the libraries to protect themselves when they stand up for your privacy.
This was a thing in multiple libraries. We really want to protect your freedom to access information.
they were prohibited from telling us when the fbi had been through to check who was reading what. so they told us when they hadn’t been. anyway librarians are heroes for privacy and freedom of information
For Alexia and Alfred both, it needs to have been their sibling. It could be no other way, the incestuous tangle that is Them is vital.
For after all, Alexia and Alfred were created. Twin clones, one unintended meant to be the pinnacle of human evolution, formed of their ancestor who many in the family treated like a god.
With the secluded way they grew up, and their mutual hatred for their father and the company he was obsessed with, they grew together like entangled vines.
Anyone else would not be a good fit. There were too many peons..insects…out there who didn’t have the right to stand by her side. But her mirror…a brother who sometimes seemed to share a soul…he was worthy of her. And she of him. He was the only person who was.
