Stafford as a town may sometimes get a bit of a bad reputation, mainly due to the bulldozing of all the pretty listed buildings in the late 60’s, and a lack of any distinguishing features. Yes it’s got an unimpressive castle, a windmill without sails and a ‘High House’, but so far the most distinguishing feature I have noticed is that the town exudes a sort of blandness that it is quite tricky to describe. The only growth market locally seems to be in charity shops and despair, and a lot of the locals here joke that the sign coming into town should read “Stafford, great connections to other more interesting locations”.
I once met a rather comical chap in a pub who told me that the town survives almost entirely on money generated by tourists who misread the sign as ‘Stratford’ and come here looking for Anne Hathaways Cottage. He claims that he diverts them to Izaac Waltons Cottage, and they don’t notice the difference. I am somewhat skeptical.
Still, everywhere has its special little gems, and I was thinking of the actual good things about Stafford, and one of those is “Staffordshire Library and Information Service”. I have only been working here in Stafford for little over a year, but I once studied engineering at Stafford College for a year at the tender age of 17, all full of vigor and vim. And probably Clearasil if I remember correctly. The course wasn’t for me and I eventually escaped a year later, but the town Library back then was a fantastic find, and in many ways I probably neglected my studies in favour of hiding in the stacks, reading books selected from the excellent science fiction collection.
You can imagine my delight when coming back to Stafford 15 years later only to discover that the Library may have moved, but the book selection is as excellent as ever. I have a rather silly way of evaluating Library collections, and I like to self-indulgently call it the ‘Cory Doctorow test’. It’s the same way everyone judges the comprehensiveness of a collection (I used to call it the ‘Stephen Baxter test’), where you search the shelves for your favorite books, and then declare the collection good or bad depending on how many of your favorite niche/mainstream author you find. It’s the same way 14 year olds judge the musical taste of other 14 year olds*.
I am happy to say that the library here is a spectacular gem in the town, with one of the most excellent and eclectic sci-fi book collections I have met. Indeed, they have a large chunk of the written output of Cory Doctorow, which made me smile, along with many other excellent authors that I never heard of before, which is quite tricky given the amount I read (At the moment, I am reading the Hornblower series chronologically, you lubberly seadogs).
Ok, they have sectioned us Sci-fi nerds away with the ‘Youth’ books again, but it’s an excusable fault, as in the old Library, the section was shared with the Mills and Boon’s. I was sometimes a bit scared to mix with the target market for these books during my hours of loitering in there (They all looked like my Nan, but with a sort of worrying gleam in their eyes). Perhaps the kids will discover that there are no more of that twinkly vampire series left to read, and pick up some Sci-fi space opera epic from Alistair Reynolds. And another nerd will be born.
Google will hopefully do its magic on this blog entry, and it will turn up in the search results for the Library in Stafford, and perhaps they will read it.
So in case this happens, I would like to state. Well done Library staff. You all deserve massive pay increases, golden crowns and probably ponies.
Carry on being awesome.
*I know this from being both 14 years old once, and from a previous job purchasing music for a college Library. Its super fun being judged by an entire college of the most critical 14 – 18 year olds ever, where every single day they come to your desk and complain that we don’t have multiple copies of ‘My Chemical Romance’ or the latest bucket of swears by Eminem. This used to happen hourly. I found it confusing as I thought all the kids were downloading music illegally nowadays?
