On August 18th, seven community members volunteered to join staff from the Carnegie Library on a book buying trip to a local bookstore. The goal was to select a range of non-fiction books that would improve the library’s collection and also be of interest to patrons.
One volunteer said that he wanted to rectify the fact that there were no books by Marshall McLuhan in the Carnegie library. His selection of books included McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951) and Empire and Communications (1950), a book by McLuhan’s predecessor, Harold Innis.
Another volunteer explained that he tried to pick a diversity of books to reflect the different tastes of the community. Some of his book selections included the humorous Old Is In: A Guide For Aging (2004) by Canadian author Eric Nicol and Hockey: A People’s History (2006) by Vancouver resident Michael McKinley.
A third volunteer came prepared with a list of book titles. Amongst her selections was The Trouble with Billionaires (2010) by Canadian authors Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, and the autobiography Bossypants (2011) by Tina Fey. She explained that Bossypants should be in the Carnegie Library because the waiting list with the Vancouver Public Library for this book was 400 people!
At the end of the book buying trip, 51 books had been selected and the volunteers were enthusiastic about the experience. “Thanks for a lot of fun!”, one volunteer said to a library staff member and another compared the book buying trip to “rolling around in chocolate.”
The 51 selected books will all be available at the Carnegie Library by the end of the month.
