Stay out of the Shadows.... or not...

Watched Dr Who on Sunday and it was set in a library, where the shadows will eat you. Scared me silly, I am still checking under the bed for "Proper Dave".

And that got me thinking about Libraries in popular culture. They are still a popular place to set novels and TV shows. Really scary things happen in the dark, in Libraries. One of the most recent I read was by Matthew Reilly, "Contest". This was a gladiator bout held every thousand years to replace war and it was held in the (and I quote the back cover) "Brooding labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles and spiralling staircases". (2001, Pan ed.)

"The Librarian" was a movie where the titular 'Librarian' was recruited to save the world from the 'bad guys' and had a lot of supernatural help." Even "Ghost Busters" has a dark library with ghosts shushing the noisy people.

I have to say that this has not been my experience of Libraries,(really, no kidding you say...lol) not many dark forbidding corners in the ones I visit. I just wonder what it is in the psyche that makes some of us look at the library in this way? Is it the possible implications of the contents, all that imagination stored? Is it the dust, the older books, the scary Librarian? Or are these places so naff and out of date they need spicing up? Popular culture really tries to do this, in my minds eye, I can still see Indiana Jones smashing the floor of the Library in Venice to find the burial place of the Knight, timing it with the Librarian stamping books, so he wouldn't notice the noise...Years on and I still want to go there! :0)

Strangely naff (sorry, my word of the day) things can also happen in Libraries, books dissappear, especially when they are in demand! Staff go troppo and talk to themselves, wandering around with bits of paper, looking at things, muttering and then walking away. Getting excited when they find a ghost book, that is, a book that was never entered onto the Library system, so doesn't exist. Moving things around, only to move them back again, just to keep the interest up, and the clients needing us! Anyway, go and have a look in the Library shadows, it can be pretty interesting in there!

Oh and anyone want something on China....yes I know the Olympics is over, but we received new items this week on just that subject! (so last week, sigh!)

Thanks to the "Lipstick Librarian" for the link to the following...I wonder what would happen if Andy could read? His imagination would be really scary :-) FeralTB