On the shelf.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

HAS there been some kind of revolution in library management this past year or two? I recall library fines as being puny--nickels and dimes even for books overdue by a month or more. And then it seemed--and this is impressionistic because I am, you understand, normally punctilious about returning library books on time--it seemed that the fines had suddenly multiplied tenfold. On one occasion last year, for the first time in my life, I paid a library fine with paper money, and got no change.

Well, no more. On my birthday this year I passed one of those milestones that appear as Middle Age shades off into Senior Citizenship. Tidying my study a few days after the birthday, I turned up a book that was disgracefully overdue. It was Peter Ackroyd's Albion, just as gripping and learned as all his others, but somehow set aside and forgotten in the drifts and piles of books that accumulate so relentlessly in my much-too-small study. I hastened down to the library with it, bracing myself for a monstrous fine. But: "Thank you!" chirped the librarian as she finished checking in the book, her voice and manner clearly indicating that our transaction was over.

"Isn't there a fine?" I asked, anxious to be a good citizen.

"No." She nodded at her computer screen. "You're a senior now. Don't have to pay fines."

The clouds parted, a shaft of sunlight breaking through. No more library fines! What else do I have coming to me? Waivers on parking tickets? Discount cinema admissions? I am now an elder of the tribe, to be honored and deferred to. (Will someone please tell my children?) It was a complete surprise, as the birthday just past was not one of the usual markers-was not in fact, I hasten to say, any very large or significant number at all. Bless my town and its wonderful library service!--which costs me a mere 7 percent of my property tax, I see from the breakdown on my statement. Given the choice, of course, I would trade in my new privilege for a couple of lost years. Matters are so arranged, though, that one never is given the choice. I'll take the privilege.

The whole episode reinforced my lifelong love affair with libraries. In every place I have lived, I have been intimate with the local libraries. I have always headed for them instinctively, and spent countless happy hours among their shelves. I would not mind very much dying in a library, though preferably from natural causes, not crushed by a falling bookshelf like the fellow in Howards End.