I want libraries to add my book to their collection. It’s an interesting women’s history story and the best biography of Garbo. Lot’s of people will check out a book that they won’t buy.
This fall I have been taking the occasional day and driving to a set of libraries. Now, I have gone into libraries all my life. The unique aspect is I have never gone into eight different libraries in one day. That’s different.
On I think the third trip, I realized that what was moving me was the civic space. Civic spaces actually, seven or eight each day.
Libraries are great civic spaces. Some of the libraries I visited were grand. This has always been true. Here is the Hoyt Library in Saginaw, which opened in 1890. With its open design and high bookcases full of books, it felt like I had entered the set for Beauty and the Beast.
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Several of the libraries I went to have a more modern design, with breathtaking open spaces. I mostly went to larger libraries, that had the resources to build a modern new building with space. These were designed with civic pride in mind, as well as functioning as libraries. From the steel tube ceiling of the Ypsilanti library, to the craftsman feel of the Delta Township Library to the modernistic Kalamazoo Library, it was a set of breathtaking spaces.
These are three examples, all with different feeling to the space. They share an openness that is individual to each design, but not that different between them, or from the Hoyt Library which is a hundred years older.
Even outside the library can be cool. The Waterford Library (I think, my notes weren’t as good as they could have been that day) has a wonderful garden you can read in.
I also walked into some older, smaller libraries. They still felt civic. The Hamtramck Library is just a repurposed storefront. While it might be the effect of the shelving, or the layout, it is still filled with civic pride.
The constant reinforcer of that civic pride is the staff. Librarians are the greatest people. They want to help and their concern for patrons shines through in the interactions I observed on each trip.
Which brings me to my favorite library story. The Fraser Library was never that big. There was an older original building, and then in 1963 people got a petition on the ballot to add an addition. In 2023 a driver in a pickup truck took out basically all of the annex after falling asleep at the wheel. He went through an exterior wall and made it all the way to the circulation desk. The annex was a total loss. The original schoolhouse building needed to be repaired and modernized. They hope to re-open in 2028. The driver walked away from the crash.
The Fraser Library reopened in two strip mall storefronts six weeks after their building got totaled. The two storefronts are separated by a beauty parlor. These are two simple, bare bones spaces. Yet the librarians are their cheerfully doing library work. The storefront windows give you that civic library spirit before you open the door.
That’s why I love libraries.
