When my flatmate and I first arrived in Shadwell/Whitechapel, we were faced with many an uphill…read morebattle. Both out of work and in need of income we were engaged in what turned out to be a fruitless but frantic search for jobs. This, of course, requires much patience and a sturdy web connection. Alas, BT was giving us what I've now learned is a rather routine shakedown, and it was a couple of weeks before our flat was wireless.
Promptly, we found Idea Store Whitechapel. What is an Idea Store, you ask? You must not be from Tower Hamlets. Idea Store is basically a library on uppers, a lending institution augmented by classroom and meeting facilities, wifi throughout, an extensive computer network, and, at Idea Store Whitechapel at least, a wall-of-windows fourth floor café.
Our cynical assumption was that it was rebranded thus in order to make library going sexier to the locals. Consequently we sneered at its pro-community attitude assuming more sinister and parochial motives. We soon discovered that there was no need to be hating. If a rebranding is what it takes to create a functional public service combining books, resources and lifelong learning such as this, then so be it. Call it whatever you want. Doris, for instance, or Sunset Beach.
Seriously, though, I love libraries. I'm not so big on ownership (you're not likely to see many postings for me about shopping) but I'm very big on books and public resources. The very idea of receiving a volume that has passed through other hands thrills me, as does the handing of it back. The romance of the continuum of ideas is what makes library going important, and what makes the Idea Store's initially cynical-seeming rebranding rather apt: it is a store, or cache, of ideas, affording sharing and interchange, the backbone of any constructive society.
