Retreat from academia: access to libraries.
For the last five years I have written no articles for academic journals, or for other academic publications. I'm supposed to be an editor of an online theological journal, and people sometime ask me why I haven't written any articles for it. Being retired is one excuse, I suppose. I don't have to write anything, just evaluate what other people have written. But the main reason is actually that I have lost access to an academic library, where I can read books and journals and keep up with the field (in my case, missiology)..
As a Unisa pensioner, I used to have access to the library, which is probably the best academic library within reach, mainly owing to an administrative mix-up. Five years ago, when I returned a certain book to the library, they said I had failed to renew it the year before, and so there was a fine amounting to hundreds of rands -- more than the value of the book -- which, as a pensioner, I could not afford to pay. So they said until I paid up, I could not take out any more books, so that was that.
I was pretty sure I had renewed the book, but after a year, I could not remember exactly what had happened. It may have been that the computers were off line, and so I would have filled in a card, but someone forgot to enter it on the system when the computers came back on line. Or perhaps there was a glitch when I tried to renew it online from home through the web site. But, whatever the reason, I had gone a whole year thinking I had renewed the book, but the library system did not recognise the renewal, and did not try to inform me of this until a year later, when the fine had mounted to a huge amount.
So now I'm pretty much restricted to the Alkantrant branch of the City of Tshwane library, which has a quite eclectic collection, but nothing very much up to date. Occasionally one finds some surprisingly useful books there, but no journals, and when the book points to another volume that is not to be found.
So there's no point in trying to write academic articles for journals any more, and I confine myself to writing blog posts, and fiction, though bloggig has become more difficult too, as my WordPress blogs became inaccessible in February 2020, at about the time the Covid epidemic struck, and Blogger has also become more difficult to use since then, and only LiveJournal has become marginally easier. And as for the fiction, no one seems to want to read it, probably because most of it is an old has been telling it like it was in the bad old days of apartheid.
As a Unisa pensioner, I used to have access to the library, which is probably the best academic library within reach, mainly owing to an administrative mix-up. Five years ago, when I returned a certain book to the library, they said I had failed to renew it the year before, and so there was a fine amounting to hundreds of rands -- more than the value of the book -- which, as a pensioner, I could not afford to pay. So they said until I paid up, I could not take out any more books, so that was that.
I was pretty sure I had renewed the book, but after a year, I could not remember exactly what had happened. It may have been that the computers were off line, and so I would have filled in a card, but someone forgot to enter it on the system when the computers came back on line. Or perhaps there was a glitch when I tried to renew it online from home through the web site. But, whatever the reason, I had gone a whole year thinking I had renewed the book, but the library system did not recognise the renewal, and did not try to inform me of this until a year later, when the fine had mounted to a huge amount.
So now I'm pretty much restricted to the Alkantrant branch of the City of Tshwane library, which has a quite eclectic collection, but nothing very much up to date. Occasionally one finds some surprisingly useful books there, but no journals, and when the book points to another volume that is not to be found.
So there's no point in trying to write academic articles for journals any more, and I confine myself to writing blog posts, and fiction, though bloggig has become more difficult too, as my WordPress blogs became inaccessible in February 2020, at about the time the Covid epidemic struck, and Blogger has also become more difficult to use since then, and only LiveJournal has become marginally easier. And as for the fiction, no one seems to want to read it, probably because most of it is an old has been telling it like it was in the bad old days of apartheid.