Wow. Thrill. I'm sure you were wondering why I didn't visit the NY library yesterday (let's pretend you know I didn't :)) until you remembered - oh right, yesterday was Columbus Day. So I couldn't get there till today, when I naturally hopped on the subway straight after work and restored your faith in my dedication to libraries (yes this was all facetious). So of course I had to make the mistake of hopstopping to the central research library were I took the elevator to the 3rd floor and returned when I realized I could not, in fact, take out books from this building. A helpful security guard pointed me two block down (short ones at least :)) to the Mid-Manhattan library, which I am fairly sure is the main circulating library branch. It certainly looks like it :)
This library got me so excited that I didn't even wait to get home to write my post - I'm writing it in a notebook *by hand* on the F train - okay really I just needed s/t to do and I'm getting home late so this just seemed most expedient, but you should see how fast I'm writing - thoughts are just flowing... :)
So anway, the first thing I noticed was the huge line waiting to check out - I mean it confirmed my suspicions that the NYpl is under provisioned for its citizenry but, wow, a lot of people read (or at least watch DVDs :)) in this city. The long checkout line could be avoided by using the self-checkout, but apparently people don't use that here? Well I tried it and my card wasn't working, but I assume that's b/c it's brand new... but I'm getting ahead of myself.
So the truth is, the fiction available isn't *that* impressive. I looked first at the old books (not new) and most of them seemed quite... old. Do they just get rid of their books when they're not new anymore? The truth is, I think there were more books than at Towson (not EP central, they let you take out all the stuff back in stacks) and definitely a lot I've never heard of but cursory inspection is not enough to get a complete read. I shall have to return for a more substantial inspection :) The more impressive display was the new books. First of all, they had some of the new books I had to return to my library w/o reading, which made me happy. Also, they had the new Gail Carriger that I mentioned earlier (the 3rd one) - and that one had a longer due date than the others - 3 weeks, not sure why. Most interestingly, they actually have an express section! New books that can be taken out for a week only and I think no renewals. That puts the pressure on the reader to be fast, but isn't that the coolest? Means you get new books *fast*, even if you're not high on the reserve list. Of course, I plan to be high on the reserve list as much as possible :) I have a bunch of things I'm planning on reserving tonight... as long as my card works, please oh please! And I'm sure when I look through the catalog I'll find plenty of books I haven't been able to get a hold of in Baltimore (well, maybe a few :)) So I've got plenty to look forward to :) And one last thing - weeknight closing time? 11 PM. Yes, you read that right. Now *that's* how to run a library :)
No comments:
Post a Comment