I love lots and lots of libraries, but I'm writing about San Francisco's Main Branch first because it is the reason I am here: My first visit this past June got me so excited that I felt I had to share about it.
This library is SO cool. For starters, it's super accessible: right across the plaza from City Hall, and literally across the street from a Bart/Muni entrance, meaning that it's a hop, skip and a jump from pretty much the entire San Francisco and East Bay area. Fittingly for a large city's main library building, it's physically humongous, but it is also beautifully designed: open, airy and very accessible. I wanted to wander around for hours.
Walking around this library made me wonder whether I shouldn't ditch my current career and go back to school for a degree in Library Science. I'm certainly an innocent when it comes to what actually makes libraries tick; other than some very minor literacy education training, I'm really just a person who likes books.
The erstwhile educator in me was the first one to be really hooked. I wandered first to the kids' section, and after admiring the picture books (in like 17 different languages! So cool!), I passed the area for older children, and saw that all of the kid-sized work tables had been carefully stocked with different literacy materials--lined paper, blank paper, pencils, crayons--and earnest signs informing patrons that they were for children's use only. I have never, ever seen such a faithful effort to provide full literacy access at a library. Reading and writing materials, brought together for you by a heroically thoughtful librarian!
Reader, tears came into my eyes. It was that wonderful.
As I headed up the stairs, this large installation caught my attention:
It is five or six stories high, and each oval is lighted with the name of an author.
That "GH" shadow at top left is cast by Langston Hughes. Pablo Neruda's on the bottom right.
Then... the wallpaper. Oh my goodness, I don't think anything could be cooler.
They lined the walls of this library with old-school card catalog cards...
That were WRITTEN ON. Here is the card for Inheritors of Earth by Gordon Eklund, embellished with a quotation from Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes.
Everywhere I looked in this library, I saw invitations for patrons to interact with the text. San Francisco Public Library seems to encourage us to get right in there and write on catalog cards and get our literary hands dirty. I love it.
Plus, you just cannot beat the architecture. Look at this alcove! This beautiful, beautiful space, just waiting around for anybody at all who wants to come and do some reading or research. It's so cheesy, but I look at a room like this, one hundred percent open to the public, and I just feel so grateful to all the people who made it possible: the librarians who wanted such a room to be available, the architects who designed it, the city officials who legislated the budget for such a place, the taxpayers who support its upkeep. Truly, I'm thankful for all of them for the huge privilege of going and sitting in that room and reading a book pretty much anytime I want.
So, in summary, this is the library that so fiercely made me want to sing its own praises that... I'm doing it. I'm singing them.
I am drooling. DROOLING.
ReplyDeleteI am thrilled to live within walking distance of this library now! Every time I go I end up spending about twice as much time as I intended, just walking around looking at all the cool ways they've designed for us to interact with words. It's magical :-)
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