September 05, 2005
SPL - at last!
So I _finally_ got a chance to visit the new Seattle Public Library! I've read so much about it over the last year+ that there weren't too many surprises, but it definitely lived up to my expectations and was a fantastic place to visit. I'm not sure I'd like working in such a huge place (though being able to have that size of collection and access to that scale of resources would be pretty amazing) -- I like being able to walk patrons over to find the books they need rather than sending them up to specialists on other floors, but I'm sure I could get used to it. We took the guided tour and then walked the whole way down along the "spiral", stopping to explore and to quiz some of the librarians about what it was like to work there.
The teen section was somewhat disappointing -- not much sense of place or excitement (of course it was Saturday of a three-day weekend, so there weren't any teens which probably didn't help the feel of it).
Some of my favorite things:
The dewey numbers on the displays in the Friends' Shop (this one says "663.2 Celebrate Fall with Northwest Wine")
The coffee cart (which we didn't try out but Jane says sells great coffee) is run by an organization that trains homeless people to enter the food industry and provides barista training and experience.
The chairs look like they are hard plastic, but are foam or something of the perfect squishiness so they are extremely comfortable (but you don't sink too much).
When you return a book, its put in this conveyor built and whisked upstairs where it is automatically sorted using RFID technology. Explained here. Very cool. Bigger Brian has apparently had a whole backstage tour of how that worked.
And I loved this display in the children's room with the books in rainbow order:
I'll add a few more photos when I get them off S's new camera.
[They do have some YA jobs posted (though probably at the branches and not at central.]
Posted by Emily at September 5, 2005 04:19 PM