Spurred by a recent post on Will Unwound, I spent a reasonable chunk of the weekend considering the library that I work in and some of the libraries I have known throughout my life. All libraries are not the same, nor should they be; the ideal library is tailored to the needs of its patron populace. Everything from atmosphere to collection to physical layout may vary.
-A high school media center can be a busy, sometimes harried, noisy, active place, filled with computers, stuffed shelves, giant displays, and desks.
-An academic research library may oscillate between absolute silence in the study rooms, frustrated or overjoyed mutters in the stacks, and the dull roar of students meeting with professors, guzzling caffeine, swapping notes, and working on projects together at large tables.
-A public library can be a quiet haven of corner stacks punctuated by cell phones or the occasional tantrum. It might have a vast central space where all activity happens, or be separated by department.
-A museum archive brings to mind concentrated quietude broken only by the rustle of pages or shoes on tile. No edibles, please!
-A corporate library, depending on its location, may be an out-of-the-way safe place for employees seeking respite from their yakkety coworkers or a centralized hub of constant activity and conversation.
To my Gen Y-Not net-addled Philistine’s brain, this is a good thing, a boon for libraries and users alike. The institution must be flexible, not calcified, if it is to endure. Libraries should be different across the vast spectrum of buildings and collections holding the name. My current library is a corporate entity in a million-square-foot building of 2,000 employees; our patrons are largely graphic designers, artists, and writers. It is tiny and bright, with displays that change weekly and a continuous flow of new items. It is sometimes very quiet and more often filled with chatter and requests. Since employees are allowed to bring well-behaved dogs in to work, sometimes there are animals with their people nosing through the stacks. Since we have a well-maintained children’s collection and since employees are also encouraged to bring their kids in, we sometimes have visits from young people, with all that entails.
I like my library, a lot. I like its variance and its atmosphere. I like the tailored collection of art, history, creative writing, graphic arts, comic book, and interior design tomes that we keep and grow, along with a mass of magazines of all kinds. I like its purple tile floor and its bulletin board of the latest runway and street styles; its large center display supporting whatever the company creative aim or project is that month; and its patrons, which run the gamut from monosyllabic IT types to knitters who come to ask my boss for purling advice to painters skilled at the art of jawing. It’s very different from the academic library where my previous job was located, and very different from the high school library of my internship, and very different again from the public library in which I grew up reading, volunteering, and working. The only library among these which attempted to be all things to all people was the public library, a topic for another post.
Variety is the spice of life, says the poet. What is your ideal library? Who are the libraries you’ve known? Below the fold are a few images of the library I’m still getting to know.
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