Wesley Gives Library Love

Hi, I'm Wesley from Library Educated.  My husband and I recently moved into a house in a new city. Among several concerns that kept me up, tossing and turning at night (“Where am I going to take yoga?”, “I have no idea where the grocery store is.”, “Are we going to pick a new church or drive to our old one?”) one that popped into my head most frequently was “Oh no…I’m going to have to find a new library”. As much as I love my old library, I’m not going to drive 25 minutes to use it, several times a week. I was going to have to learn to adjust to a new place.

A couple of things made my old library great. It was a small, uncrowded library but it had access to our county’s extensive library network. This meant I got almost everything I wanted to read delivered right to my library. The holds shelf was right by the door so if I was in a rush I could grab books and self-checkout and be back in the car in less than 5 minutes. (I generally don’t browse at the library, but occasionally on my short time in the library there would be a book on the “New Book” shelf that would give me itchy “I-need-that-book” fingers.  ) The librarians are friendly and sweet, always greeting me cheerily. They never judged me (at least to my face, haha) about the weird assortment of books that would show up in my name.

I haven’t made the jump to my new library yet, life has been busy and I have a lot of Netgalley books piling up on my Kindle. But when I finally find my new library these are things that I hope that it has:

•  An outside return box that has a “5 minutes for book return” parking spot in front of it. I am lazy, there I said it.
•   Friendly librarians who don’t mind it when you squeal from happiness a little too loudly when a book you’re waiting for is sitting on the hold shelf with your name on it. (Not that I’ve ever done that…*cough*)
•  Summer reading programs for adults, with prizes! I know kids need these programs so there brains don’t go to mush between school years. But I think adults have the same problem! Staring at the computer at work, and then staring at your phone or the TV at home, it’s easy to get mushy. And who doesn’t love prizes as motivation? 
•  Does my new city do any fun programs? Show movies in the park? Art crawls with wine on the weekends? I’d love there to be some community event information at the library so I can explore and get to know this area.
• A wide range of books. I’d rather my library spend money on some interesting graphic novels or foreign movies then on buying 50 copies of the latest YA sensation that will be about 48 too many copies in 4 months.

Honestly, I doubt my new library will have all of these things, but a girl can dream. The important thing is that libraries are there and continue to be great resources in the community, even if I have to walk across a parking lot to return a book inside the building.

My "old" library

 

Thanks for sharing about your library, Wesley!

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