Ode to the library

So someone brought up a good question last week, and I've been pondering it, debating it on both sides, and I still don't know the answer.

It's illegal to download music off the Internet. It's illegal to copy CDs. It's illegal to have illegal music illegally on your legal iPod. So if the library, the fine, upstanding establishment that it is, lets you check out CDs, what do they expect you're going to do with them? Listen to them legally? Return them uncopied? Un-uploaded? I think not.

I think that answer's easy. Pirate away, my friend. Oh, but don't tell them I told you to. I'm too busy to go to jail. Besides, I didn't do anything. All legal here, yessirie.

The real crime, I believe, is the library's CD selection. It's not bad (as a matter of fact, I was very impressed. And did some big jazz guru die and leave all his CDs to the Oshkosh Public Library? Because I'm pretty sure that I've not seen that many jazz CDs all in one place. Except my spare bedroom. But that's another story for another day).

Back to the scene of the attempted crime: You can't go in there and browse, unless you have like, all day. I have a hard enough time picking out a DVD or VHS tape. Imagine that many shelves, only filled with CDs. Whoa. You can fit way more CDs on there, if my calculations are correct. They're separated by "jazz" and "not jazz." Unfortunately for me, they assume that if you like The Strokes, then you must also like George Strait (Strait, George, in library-speak). Not so, mes amis. Not so.

(For the record, I didn't just know George Strait's Web site off the top of my head, OK? Gosh.)

And, if the lumping of the genres doesn't bother you, the alphabetical disorder will. Now, I worked in a library back in the day. Way back in the day. I know people aren't smart, and that they'll stick any CD or book anywhere. But dang. There are like, 6 "S" shelves. I just want one CD. Oh, the humanity!

But, all that said, for that to be my only two complaints about the library, then I think they're doing swimmingly.

And, to quote the guy who sent me to the library to check this out, "NERD ALERT." The library is awesome.

IN CONCLUSION, I don't know what the library really thinks about what you're doing with the CDs. But don't ruin a good thing. Oh, and there is a certain feeling of guilt associated with this all. You copy a CD from a friend, it's OK. But from the library? It'd be like eating the whole box of shells and cheese. You know it's bad, you do it anyhow, but you'd at least feel sorry for it later.

(Photo: It's a pirate. Get it, pirating software? Pirate? Come on, it's funny.)