A good library is hard to find

What makes a good library? How do you go about setting one up?

I can tell you some of what a good library is, and does: it's the sort of place where, every time you go, you can come across something new and fascinating, that brings you nose-to-nose with a world you never knew existed. A good library, one suspects, is one where pretty much everything in there is worth reading, even if it doesn't happen to be the sort of thing you care for.

A library, I am further convinced, should primarily have good books. I don't mind movies and CDs and computers and magazines; I got a lot of use out of the Purcellville library's CD collection. But if the library doesn't have books worth reading - or hides them among the nonsense, so you can't find them - I think it has seriously failed in its librariness.

I ask, because we went back to our closest branch library today. Sigh. It's - it's - I went and I couldn't find anything to read! Again! Or any movies to watch! Also again! And they don't have music CDs at all, as far as I can tell. So I sat and read a magazine that the good doctor used to keep in his waiting room.

I'm genuinely not sure if they absolutely don't have much I would want to read, or if they just hide them really effectively. It's a large new building. They have a lot of new books, a lot of computers, a big budget. I know I've got peculiar and somewhat conservative tastes, but still, I like a fairly broad range of reading-matter. I'd read children's, teens, adult sci-fi and fantasy, adult literature. I'd read fascinating and beautiful non-fiction books. You could probably talk me into reading philosophy and theology and plays and poetry. I would read ancient books, preferably in good translations. I'd read history or biography, or gardening and cooking and all manner of housey and crafty things.

So why does every book I pick up there seem to be soul-sucking drivel? Can someone explain this to me??