Notebook: (1) Borrower and a Lender Be

by Ann Kjellberg, editor

Libraries and bookstores have a big thing in common: they bring books to people. They are the front lines, hearing from within neighborhoods about where people’s interests lie, knowing what is going on in towns and on streetcorners, and collecting from publishers and writers news of what is available and on the way, every day making these connections between readers and books, listening, learning, putting books in real people’s hands, expanding the reach of ideas and building reading communities where people are. There is also a big difference between them: bookstores, and publishers, are trying to sell what libraries are trying to make available for free. Whether this distinction amounts to a confrontation or a complement depends on whom you ask.