My review of The Invisible Library

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good solid three stars, and highlights how wide the three star rating is for me.

I enjoyed reading this book.

Maybe it was not good to read it so soon after The Aeronaut's Windlass but that is how my reservations came in at the library.

This book is about a library (or rather The Library) and the collection policy for it which does not appear to be written down anywhere. Okay, that is one interpretation of what is it about, but it is what drives the story forward - how to obtain a very specific book for the collection. As we see how one book is obtained, we hear stories and rumours of other items being obtained in similar or different way.

There are librarians (or actually Librarians - the capitalisation is important) who travel to parallel worlds, collecting near identical editions (mainly of fiction). There are a range of procurement methods, including theft, and this becomes a slightly discredited method through the book. This theft is off putting (and I don't agree with libraries using theft or theft like practices to develop their collections, and yes I know this is a work of fiction).

There is a dragon, stylish dressing, zeppelins, vampires, werewolves, fae and some very interesting action sequences in the steampunk mix. All of the characters can deliver surprises (and I won't mention exactly what they are because of spoilers). There is character development which works well. This also turns out to be yet another political thriller in my accidental year of reading political thrillers.

It is the first in the series and I will be very interested to see what happens next and look forward to reading the next title.



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Is your social media mentioned on vehicles?

I liked this, it was simple, and clear. The social media was consistently present on promotional material - see here for some more examples.

Instameet at the USA National Archives

This is a lovely story in so many ways. It is a lovely use of Storify, it is great to hear that the USA National Archives ran an Instameet, and that is was so successful (judging from the great photographs). It is very much about the building architecture, but that is fine.

Finding out about online resources in library buildings

When I visit libraries and other places I like to see what I can find out about their online presence when I am onsite.  These are just a few examples.

Denver Library made it easy to find out about their local music


their ebooks and other online services as well.


Arapahoe Libraries had promotions including for ebooks, and zineo posters and screen savers


Robbins Library tells about the Massachusetts wide ebooks collection


Boston tells people about their renovations

Central Park encourages people to share their playground images

The Blood bank encourages sharing on social media

and the Australian Museum provided a hashtag (as well as other information not shown in this photograph)