J'aime la bibliotheque

I sing a love song to the Madison Public Library and its cohorts in the South Central Library System, the lending network that links libraries in seven Wisconsin counties. With my web browser I'm able to reserve materials from all over, and then I can go downtown and grab them at my leisure--relatively recent bestsellers (currently: Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars), music I'm excited about (the Strokes, Ryan Adams, Justin Timberlake), hard-to-find videos ("Degrassi High," old-school "Star Trek"). And it's all free, free, free.

When I picked up a Donnas CD recently, my librarian friend Mary was behind the desk. She glanced at the disc, shook her head in disbelief and said, "I love that the library owns this."