Listing to Port

1. The Alexandrian Rook. We are unsure whether this beast was originally a book or a bird. It is believed to draw its origin from the sack of library of Alexandria; the first specimens being either burned and librarian-haunted books that nonetheless managed to escape, or crow-like birds who found themselves able to successfully hide in the book ash. These days they appear whilst roosting to be small books with all-black pages. When threatened with reading, they unfold themselves and fly off. However, over the years they have evolved exceptionally dull titles and as a result are rarely removed from the shelves.

2. The Gentlemen. Each library has its own unique code for summoning the Gentlemen. For example, one might take out and put back the third book on the bottom shelf nearest the door, the favourite book of the head librarian, and each book whose author begins with Z. Once summoned, the gentlemen (who are impeccably groomed) will enter the library. An extremely polite request will be made, usually of something the summoner cannot afford to lose. The summoner’s liver is a common example. The Gentlemen will wax lyrical about how happy this item will make them. Most people still manage to refuse, but are left with a vague but uncomfortable sense of having violated the social contract. No punishment is exacted. The Gentlemen may be heard to tut slightly as they leave.

3. The late fine. Initially animated by Doris of Sendai, the original pirate-witch-ninja, the late fine is a sentient pile of pieces of eight which has spent the past eighty years wandering the libraries of the world. It is believed to be looking for a library from which Doris once borrowed and neglected to return a book on practical cutlass use. Sadly the fees accruing to that withdrawal are now likely to exceed the value of the late fine. Being a rather timid beast which does not fancy a telling-off, we believe it may have ascertained the correct library many years ago and have been avoiding it ever since.

4. The Gudrunsen collection. In 1849, a small village in Northern Sweden was cursed into books by something that came out of a tree in a hollow. The books, which are attractively leather-bound, contain what appears to be an ever-evolving stream of consciousness from each resident. Some are aware that they are trapped in books, though most believe that they are dreaming. The Gudrunsen collection was held in a library funded by relatives of the books for nearly a hundred years, but was accidentally sold to a Finnish collector in the years following World War II. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

1. On nights when the moon shines through the windows, the books in the horticultural section may rise up on their ribbonlike stems and open up to the moonlight. The energy gained from moonlight powers the growth of new pages, often detailing highly unusual plants. Therefore it is worth your while as a librarian to site the horticultural books near a window with a good view of the sky. The opening of the books is often accompanied by a great swarm of b’s out from the other books in the library to sip at the illustrated nectar. By the morning they will be back in place, just a little fatter and shinier.
2. Gymnastics books like to slip from the shelves in the dark and practice bending and stretching. Often they can be observed (if one has set up a book hide in the library, that is) performing slow flips across the floor and back again. This is why books on gymnastics often have cracked spines.
3. Much of the nature section will be particularly quiet, for fear of waking up the animal books. Animal books hibernate for most of their lives, but can be induced to wake by a dark but noisy environment - for example if the library is situated next to a nightclub or main road. The other books dislike this and will sometimes sing book lullabies in the hope of stopping it happening. The consequence of a mass book waking is usually a vast and savage bookfight between works on predators and works on prey. Sometimes a book on both may even attempt to devour its own interior pages in a frenzy of curiosity. Needless to say this also wakes up the b’s, which will grumpily swarm around and may sting any stray librarians who have the misfortune to still be present.
4. Books for babies often wake up in the night and will sometimes fling themselves off the shelves or spit up pages onto the floor. Those without fluff or mirrored pages can be found poking those with these things. Books for slightly older children, usually shelved in an adjacent section, can sometimes be found jumping back and forth in an effort to rock the baby section back to sleep.
5. Needless to say, many of these happenings involve a fair bit of mess. Look out for those unusually conscientious books who clean up the mess, mend pages and poke the plant books back into their dust covers in the morning. It is difficult to say which books will take on the role of book shepherd - it varies by library - but often large print fiction, young adult novels and works of philosophy can be found helping out.

A library of trees, planted in alphabetical order of their commonly-used name in long ranks across the field: apple, birch, cherry and so forth. We vary the spacing of the ranks based on the height of the trees and how much light the next trees along require. It is an oddly sterile place, but good for holding garden parties. On our deaths, we have decreed that the field return to nature, in the hope that one day it will become a chaotic forest with a tantalizing hint of the alphabet about it.

A library of cats. We have derived a complex classification scheme for them that we are very proud of, starting with genetic charts and using age, size and whisker length as subclassifications. But the cats will not stay in their assigned spaces. Some scratch at our carefully constructed section dividers. None of them will submit to whisker measurement.  We even find them in the morning with their collars off, nonchalantly grooming themselves on the front desk and shedding hair into the index system. We spend all our time finding the cats and refiling them. Somehow we do not mind this; there is even talk of finding more librarians.

A library of the dead. Some might argue that this is the function of a cemetery. But we disagree; one cannot legally make withdrawals from a cemetery. Our library of the dead, on the other hand, positively encourages short-term borrowing. Our stock (though we are still working on fully stocking the building; perhaps our initial facility was overambitious) is sorted by preferred method of decomposition (in soil; in air; mummified; saponified; in formaldehyde). All stock items have agreed prior to their death that they would like their mortal remains to revisit the world from time to time. Borrowers may, however, wish to inform the police beforehand so as not end up in a situation they find difficult to explain.

A library of lost things. This requires certain preparations. We have been raiding lost property offices and prowling down trains at the end of the line, black sacks at the ready. We buy up mounds of stranded suitcases from space-strapped airports. We follow the forgetful around, making distracting noises and snatching what they drop. Our collection of socks is particularly fine. We have all the usual exhibits: umbrellas, crutches, hats, prosthetic legs, notebooks, toddlers, packets of cheese, antibiotics, carnevale masks. Our library is open only to those who have lost things of their own. We collect the stories of the applicants’ losses and match them up with the lost item we have that we think will do them the most good (though it does not necessarily echo the original loss; we have lined up those who have lost loved ones with maps left on buses, for example).