> A student writes about "our fast-paste society." This is the kind of mistake that gets me unglued.

> One of the registrants at this site reports that a registered nurse referred to a "staff infection," and the nurse didn't mean something that was infecting workers at the hospital. If the nurse is ignorant of the term "staph," what else was missing in his/her medical training?

> The Associated Press reported that the San Francisco zoo was having problems because its tigers were mauling their feeders. The AP article said that the problem was solved by installing a "feeding shoot." Well, we guess that should teach those tigers to behave.

> A student writes about drivers who "make rude jesters at other drivers. Not funny, those rude jesters.

> Another writes about the "on trays at the school cafeteria." Well, I guess they are on trays.

> One of my favorites is the one by a student who was arguing that the Boy Scouts should expel a scout who was an atheist. "Yes," he wrote, "This man should certainly be dismembered." (That's one I'll always remember.)
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

"I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream."

"I've had a lot of patients with him." (What is your medical speciality?)

Patient: Doctor, I think I'm a pair of curtains.
Doctor: Pull yourself together, man!

The worst one is those who think "should have" is actually "should of". A fair few think it is.

Endi: As a lifelong U.S. resident, I recognize the pronunciation difference between moot and mute, as does the American Heritage Dictionary (my underlining). You can use Pogo's link to check the moot pronunciation and, in the same dictionary (AHD), this link to reach the mute pronunciation.

On a less sophisticated level (and just a spelling error rather than a malaprop), another student wrote about "teaching classes in collages." Here's a college student who doesn't know how to spell college. I wonder if he knows what a collage is. I doubt it.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

I don't understand the psychology of it, but some people simply cannot understand or be corrected. I remember an individual who was interested in "chromatics." You know, making things of fired clay. She also would say that some problems were "many-fauceted." Some people were irked when their names were grossly mispronounced again and again. But there was no changing her.

By the way, I'm probably wasting space here, but if anyone seeing this has not read Richard Lederer's "Anguished English," you'd best not fail to do so.

As to your question, OldGuy, at the library where I work we purchase and add 100 or more DVDs per month. Because of a liberal checkout and renewal time period, rarely do they sit long on the shelf. Approximately 200 non-fiction books are purchased every month. The majority of them end up in the 600s -- the "how-to" section (635 gardening, 636 domestic animals and their care, 641 cookbooks, and 746 needlework and sewing). Others end up in 378 (study guides for AP exams, the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, MCAT, etc.), 914 for world travel and 917 for U.S. travel, 930-999 for world history. The new fiction added are usually multiple copies of bestsellers or new novels by authors who've produced bestsellers in the past and have name recognition.

People still read, but we don't see the research going on like we did in the '80s. Then libraries were filled in the evenings with students of all ages working on book reports and term papers, desperately searching for books to use for notecard-filling-out. The only students we see now on a regular basis are Asian ones.

Our book purchases are highly practical titles. In a month's time, we may add only one or two poetry books, a few new plays, a few books in the religion section (books by the Dalai Lama and the Pope are always good choices, and definitely new titles by atheists), bestselling titles in the political arena, perhaps Bill Cosby's or Jeff Foxworthy's newest book, and a few new biographies. As you can see, there's not much of a challenge to the reader.

Libraries are finding that they must reinvent themselves. Serious research is rarely done any longer in a public library; serious reading of the classics or of a demanding author is nearly unheard of. No one thinks any longer. They want to "do" (plant a garden, make the baby stop crying at night, build a deck, avoid paying a mechanic, learn how to care for their new basset hound puppy) and "escape" (manga or graphic novels and feature movies). The public library used to be the community hub. You'd bring your child to the library to work on his book report (due tomorrow) and meet up with other parents whose children were doing the same thing. (Now students copy and paste off the Internet.) It was like going to the grocery store or church; you'd see half the town at the library. How can libraries become that hub again when patrons grab a few DVDs or bestsellers and leave?

One of the possibilities is to bring in the children. That means having lots of interesting things for them to do when they visit and special programs to bring them there in the first place. Another attraction would be literacy helps and programs for the many immigrants who probably have library cards but are not sure how to use the library and all the wonders it contains, who are not comfortable enough with English to ask questions of a librarian or even a circulation clerk at the front desk. Book discussion groups bring in especially women, so that's a possibility for reestablishing the library as a community hub. Adult programming must become a priority, to get people into the library somehow so they will realize there are other things they can do there.

As I write this, my older son, who also works in a public library, said that DVDs and books on CD are the two most popular formats that circulate at his workplace. I will have to agree with him. Last Thursday, I added 26 new adult and children's books on CD, mostly current bestsellers and Disney titles. I would guess they are listened to mostly while driving.

Audio-visual formats have at least temporarily taken over in popularity. Patrons still say, though, that the Kindle will never replace a real book. That tactile and general sensory experience of a book is unique!