I wonder what Melvil Dewey would think about all this?
Melvil was the fellow who invented the Dewey Decimal System for libraries in the late 19th century. All of us English majors of a certain vintage have fond (not) memories of thumbing through Dewey's card catalogs for hours and hours.
Well, we're not in Melvil's dusty old stacks anymore, boys and girls. These days you can quickly locate library books online, and even download e-books, comics, audiobooks and, to get your video fix, movies and TV shows.
All for free.
Members of the Central Arkansas Library System have access to thousands of streaming movies and television shows through Hoopla Digital, an Ohio-based digital streaming service working with public libraries.
Other local libraries on the Hoopla list are William F. Laman Public Library in North Little Rock, Little Rock Air Force Base Library and Garland County Library.
Find details on how to sign up at cals.lib.ar.us. No library card? You can even apply for that online.
The library allows patrons to borrow up to five titles each month -- each movie or TV show for three days.
What is the selection like? Movies run the gamut from Alpha House to Omega 1. I recommend Rise of the Zombies, Mariel Hemingway's finest work.
TV shows include kids' programs (Inspector Gadget), classics (Dragnet, Father Knows Best), Westerns (Lonesome Dove) and a slew of PBS favorites (Inspector Lewis, Northanger Abbey), among many others.
What would Melvil appreciate? My bet is Noah Wyle in The Librarian: Quest for the Spear.
Style on 07/21/2015