Library Letdown

Things are looking up. For one thing, I have a job interview. Not a teaching gig, but it's a job! I'm very excited. I'll tell you all about it after the interview. I am trying not to jinx it too much. But that one phone call propelled me into motion today, making me do like 15 tasks on my to-do list. I even sorted through all of the bills and old mail.

Anyway, on to Library Letdown:

I went to the Free Library of Philadelphia, center city branch, on Monday. It's a gorgeous building:

It is a grand place, built in 1927. Some pics of the interior:

I walked up the grand staircase in the lobby and was in awe:

Maybe because it was a rainy day, or maybe because it's been treated poorly due to budget cuts, but I found the whole building to be pretty depressing. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of books, and it's huge, but once you get into the separate departments, you find that though the architecture is beautiful, it isn't being used to its fullest potential.

Drab green-grey walls and metal bookcases mixed in with older wood bookcases. The saddest part was the art section, which was large but there was no actual art on the walls. In fact, there were no pieces hanging in any of the rooms I went into, even though it was clear there were at one time paintings on the wall. The hooks and nails were all still there.  I thought, Ok, it's lost some of its luster, but maybe the collection makes up for it. It's a big collection, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to find any book in the convoluted system they use.

When you get there, the terminals all direct you to the same web search you can do from home, but you quickly find that when you do a search, you aren't in the library where your book happens to be!

This is the search page for the "classic" search method, which usually yields the basic information you need:

Can you tell where you click "search"? No? Well that's because there is no search button. Once you enter a phrase to search, you click "Author, Title, Subject, etc. Those are the search buttons. 

Then when you get to the book you are searching for, it's hard to figure out where it is because the location of the item is buried under a bunch of other information:

Right there at the bottom under "Holdings' is where you look to see if it is in the branch you are standing in, and guess what? Nine times out of ten it is in another branch. Look how many branches have Dead Until Dark: 

There were two copies held by the Central Library, and neither were available. I get that, it's a popular book, but I found that it can take up to 6 weeks to get it from another library! You can just drive there and pick it up in less time. No information about interlibrary loan was available, and it was hard to find a call number that corresponded to the Library.

Even worse, I walked down to the lobby and saw no signage for a checkout desk. Usually, in any library you walk into, whether they be academic or small public libraries, the circulation desk is clearly indicated. Not so here, I had to go to the "Popular Library" section, where they keep the most popular titles, DVDs, and test reference books. It seemed like a silly, redundant section and was really small. There I found some self-checkout machines and two actual library workers, both dressed in grubby t-shirts and jeans. They looked like they were dressed for moving day and I thought maybe I was in the wrong place. Damn. I could not have gotten away with looking schlubby at the library I worked at. And who would want to!? It may be a low paying city job, but damn if you've given up on looking decent on your way out to work, you should really take inventory. The librarians in the other departments seemed more professional, but why was circulation so laid back?

Two, count 'em, two library weirdos talked to me. I'm a freak-magnet, and libraries are also freak-magnets, so I figured it was par for the course, but these two dudes were heavily strange. One walked by and whispered "looking very cute todayyyyy" so creepily that I thought he must have been singing along to a song, but no, he was looking at me.

Later another one came by as I was doing a search on a catalog computer and said, "Pretty lady, where are you going?" Both guys exhibited crazy, base-head behavior. Smelly, close talkers who I gave the death glare to immediately. The death glare involves a stern face, a raised eyebrow, and the look that I get that says "are you fucking kidding me, asshole?" I gave it a lot in my twenties apparently. It's why I never dated much! It kind of looks like this face that my cat Stevie gives:

One thing I'm learning here, it's to bring out the death glare more often. Sometimes I walk around with it on the default setting. It helps weed out the crazies on the street.

The other day, some random Indian guy came up to me as I was walking to my bus and tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hi, how are you?" To which I said, "Good?" because who says this if they don't know you other than salespeople, right? He then asked where I was going and if I was Indian. Yes, you read that right, "Where are you going? Are you Indian?" No, sadly, I'm not from India, but the pick-up line used here was superb, no? I told him I was Cuban and he said, "Are you sure?" all quizzically like I'm lying, which if I was, wouldn't you just accept it and leave me alone? I mean, would you really be like, "You are lying, you are in fact Indian and are lying to me. I deserve your time!"WTF!?  And so I said, yes, it's true. And then he was disappointed! Dude, seriously? Not only do you have an Indian girls only plan, but you are so bad at deploying it I feel bad about myself. Am I a loser magnet too? People who know me, don't answer that.

Anyway, I checked out one Mexican cookbook and nothing else because they didn't have anything I needed. Not even reference items that were in the catalog. The librarians were all nice and knowledgeable, but seemed a bit stressed. The budget cuts once threatened to shut down all of Philadelphia's libraries, so I can imagine they don't have time or energy to gussy the place up, but it's so sad to see a lovely building not as shiny and beautiful as it could be. In the very city where the first library opened its doors to the public, no less.