Non-fiction reading for those who liked Master and Commander

[slashpile]

I might have mentioned that I blasted through the entire Aubrey/Maturin series (the 20 novels that spawned the Master and Commander movie) during my semester break?

I loved the books - but they made me realize how incredibly ignorant I am of the basic European Imperialism/Exploration Time Period. So I went looking for non-fiction, and found The

Comments

[nialla42]

I love the option of keeping lists in WorldCat. Right now I've got one that's a "want to ILL" list and another that's everything that I've read via ILL, so I don't forget which ones I've already done. I've been reading series and related titles, so it's easy to get confused.

The ones that crack me up are the folks that practically do a drama routine when they come in about paying off a huge fine. They've finally screwed up their courage to come in and pay it off, and then we tell them...

"That'll be 40 cents."
::blink, blink:: "That's all?"
"Yes, but you can certainly pay more if you want." *g*

There are some libraries doing away with fines altogether, but send out a bill after so many notices, sort of like Blockbuster's "no late fees, but if it's not back in a month, you've bought it" policy. The only problem with that is Blockbuster has your credit card and can automatically charge you for it, and we'd have to spend our time trying to get someone to cough up the item or money.

We are [crossing fingers] trying to get a new system, and I'm hoping that takes care of a lot of issues. People can manage their account online, getting reminders by email when things are due/overdue, and they can pay fines with PayPal as well. It won't help everyone, because not everyone has email, but it will reduce our workload tremendously re: overdues. We sent in a grant proposal for the program, and the due date was today, so hopefully we'll hear some good news in a few weeks.