At what point does a personal "collection" become a "library"? What to you constitutes a library- e.g...

When you own more than one book

I own two books, does that make it a library?

Yes, a library is a collection of books

At least one entire room dedicated to books.

What if you have a really large living room with ~2,000 books in it, but which is still a living room, not a library?

That is not the definition of a library.

There are literally thousands of libraries that are privately funded and don't even allow borrowing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_library

Librarian here.

I personally would describe a personal library as a room or rooms whose sole purpose is the collection, management and reading of books or other informational sources.

So just having a lot of books in a room isn't enough. Its the purpose of the room that is important like having a sewing room, game room or gym.

I'd say it becomes a library when you feel the need to start categorizing things so you don't get overwhelmed.

I set aside a room in the new house just for books, planned it, installed cases, organized a few thousand books, and put in a comfy couch, chair, and table. It's my library. Of course, then I had to make another wall of bookcases in the den to deal with overflow, but that room isn't dedicated to reading in quite the same way.

>diamonds
Fuggggggggg, I'm jelly

This is great. Such a nice range of stuff in there. It's like you read whatever you enjoy.

Aren't you a teacher or something?

There is a beautiful book by Alberto Manguel (a Borgesian) with the title "The Library at Night", about Libraries analyzed from different perspectives. Like "The Library as History", "The Library as a Monument", "The Library as a Refuge" etc.

I'm an adjunct professor at a couple of universities, so I never know what the heck I'll be asked to teach. Of course, that means I can justify almost any book purchase with vague thoughts about how it might come in handy someday... but I do tend to just buy what I want to read.

How much do you make per class/how many classes do you teach per semester?

So if a charitably funded organization had a large collection of books which it lent to people you couldn't call it a library?

Once you charge someone 75 cents for returning a book you loaned them 2 months late

what courses have you taught? what courses would you like to teach?

as a graduate student myself, i am earnestly curious: did you want to go into academia? why just adjunct?

i feel a library is a library when its contents constitute an a meaningful resource, of something, to somebody. like programming libraries.

a large collection of books is just that, a very large (categorized) collection is an archive; when it becomes a resource of some sort, it's a library. not all archives are libraries but all libraries are archives

that's just my personal definition but i like it

i like this idea. it places the "library" somewhere between its materialistic base and actual use

do you enjoy being a librarian? do you possess your own library?

The pay varies by institution (one pays over a thousand less per course than the other, but I won't give my exact pay). The course load also varies from a maximum of four at a time to semesters with no work (often all or part of the summer).

I've taught a range of first-year essay-writing, business writing, technical writing, etc., fiction, poetry & drama, etc. I often teach genre fiction courses: mystery, horror, science fiction, fantasy, children's literature, and so forth. More rarely I get to teach a higher-level course like Arthurian, medieval, Victorian novel, American literature, etc. I'd like to teach more Victorian work, perhaps some higher Romantic work with the long epic poems, and something with comics.
I had every intention of getting a tenure-track position, back in my innocent scholastic days. But they're vanishing by the day and only the very best students have a chance any more. I was a good student, but without enough publications, and I didn't attend a top school, so when my application goes up against 200+ others (as it does for every measly TT posting), it will never get to the top three. At this point, my wife has a good career in this city and I make enough to be helpful part-time, so I've almost stopped hunting.

Alright, just curious. The pay for my local CCs is about $2200-$2400 per course.

Ouch. Okay, I make around $6500-$8000 a course (Canadian) gross. Of course, I have the doctorate and have been teaching and gaining seniority for the past decade, but damn, some of my markers make more than $2200. With that kind of pay, I assume you're in the U.S.?

Use of the term personal as an adjective changes the function of the noun library now doesn't it, you twat?
There's a reason that Public Libraries are called PUBLIC libraries.

Yep, Southern US.

I think another difference is that you're teaching at universities, and the pay I mentioned is for community colleges. You only need a Masters for those. I'd definitely expect a PhD to double your pay like that.

Yes, that makes sense. Throw in the currency exchange, and the two aren't so vastly different. Still, that's vicious underpaying for the work involved.

are these your books? you have great depth...

what other authors do you read/teach/collect?

It's unusual for me to have that many books on a single author, but the mention of the Masters reminded me: I did my MA paper on Eliot, and I've always loved his work. My doctorate is on Pre-Raphaelite printing, though, so I amassed a ton of books related to them (the larger case in this pic: the smaller one in the corner is all other post-medieval poetry).

Does anyone here have a subscription to a private library? If so, is it any better than a regular public library in the books that are carried?