Library Musings

“Malaysia”

It says something about the state of our academia when, searching my uni library’s database for “Malaysia,” I find 423 items listed – and most of it written by Westerners.

Guess that also says something about the sheer lack of interest Malaysians have in Malaysia.

I kind of have a niggling feeling that if I had tried the same thing in MMU’s library database, I wouldn’t have turned up that many items. USM’s library might have a more substantial collection, but probably not in English… Speaking of English, when I have time, I’m going to go look for these books: Problems of learning English as a second language : an investigation of factors affecting the learning of ESL in Malaysia and The English of Singapore and Malaysia. Interesting, right?? Shouldn’t be too hard to dig them out – I’ll bet no one is going to borrow them anytime soon.

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“Lord of the Rings”

I realised that it was incredibly silly of me to have worried about bringing the LOTR books along with me in case I wanted to read them. (FYI, I didn’t bring them – I only brought Pride & Prejudice with me.)

First of all, I’m in the UK. On top of that, it turns out that I’m studying in the university that has the oldest English Literature department in the world. It’s virtually impossible for the library to not have at least one copy of LOTR.

So I went a-digging in the library a few weeks ago and unearthed three copies of it. Walked off with one immediately.

It’s appropriately red. (Red Book of Westmarch, anyone?)

Drawback is that it’s a Short Loan book, which means it’s due after a week – so I have to keep renewing it. Luckily the library sends reminders otherwise I’m pretty sure I’d forget and have to pay hefty fines. And I mean hefty. I think they charge 15p a minute for some late books…

Right now I’m somewhere in the middle of the Treebeard chapter.

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