OxBlog

# Posted 3:57 PM by Patrick Belton

ARLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARIES ARE BETTER THAN OXFORD UNIVERSITY ONES, PART 318: For all of our readers in the metropolitan Washington area, I've got to just rave for a second on the public library system in Arlington. Not only does it have the incredible area studies and diplomatic history holdings that you might expect out of, well, out of a wealthy area with comparatively low social service needs, and populated entirely by current and former CIA, State, DOD hands - BUT, its online holdings (OED, Proquest, Infotrack) rival if not exceed those of any university I've ever attended. For those of you who are in D.C. (and particularly you all in Arlington), this is better than sliced bread (which isn't really that great anyway - Nabeel Abraham gives a cute story in Arab Detroit of he and his brothers as children pestering their Arabic mother to buy Wonder Bread instead of baking fresh Khubz Arabi every afternoon for them, so they could be like the non-Arab kids in town; and trying to hide their underwhelment with the mythical white sliced bread when their mother finally caved in and bought it....)

(And to those of you who are keeping track, yes, in a noteworthy three-day spurt of nerdiness I've managed to (1) brag about my public library system, (2) tell all of you about a date night spent reading the Greek classics out loud with my bride, and (3) compare the personals ads in two different literary reviews. Hmmm....seems like, to restore this blog's former unparalleled well-rounded image of physical and mental athleticism I should start up a blogger pin-up series or something....)

UPDATE: Matt Madden concurs in part, dissents in part (specifically, the library's no food/no drink rule). (So here's a deal - track me down in the library, Matt, and we'll go out for an interblogonal slurpee)

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