Exterior engraving at the Brooklyn Public Library

A good thing about being a woman in my late thirties is that, back in 1991, I was the perfect age to take in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when it first hit the big screen. The film left quite an impression on me, and no part more than when Belle first sees the library that Beast has built for her. The room itself is vast and spacious, with high vaulted ceilings, shelves upon shelves of books that require ladders to reach, and where ladders won’t do, magnificently ornate spiral staircases — the stuff a 5-year-old girl’s dreams are made of. We understand that the library is Belle’s happy place — a refuge wherein she can escape the realities of everyday life and get lost in the magical world that is storytelling.

Belle’s library, from the OG Beauty & the Beast, 1991

What Makes a Happy Place?

Over three decades have passed since then, and although I haven’t found a library quite like Belle’s yet, I’ve nonetheless rarely encountered one that I didn’t like. Libraries featured as cozy sanctuaries throughout my childhood, youth, and adult memories: being read to aloud after school (Roald Dahl’s The Witches, with different voices for each witch, of course), perusing any and all magazines I could get my hands on, and feeling insufferably important on gaining special permission to borrow restricted books in college.

Of course it goes beyond the books — there’s a vibe shift the moment you walk through the doors of any library. I’ve always been a sucker for peace and quiet, and minus the children’s room, the library could always be counted on to deliver this in spades. This is a big part of its staying power — although reading has declined, the chaos of modern life has not, and people flock to these strongholds of silence for a chance to think and work without the noise we encounter everywhere else.

And so, when I found myself unemployed, officeless and looking to get some writing done, the Brooklyn Public Library was the obvious choice. I loaded up a tote with my laptop, notebook, and virtue-signaling reusable coffee mug, and headed over.

kid vs. kid at the library

RIP, Peace and Quiet

Not five minutes after I’d settled at a faux-wood carrell on the building’s upper level, a fellow patron began to cough — a deep, hacking cough that set off my post-covid paranoia. Soon another person was talking on the phone, and a third sat down across from me and began to unpack her lunch from a crinkly Starbucks paper bag. She was slurping her soup when a man a few tables away began to snore. “Unbelievable”, the slurper exclaimed, to no one in particular. It was.

Most of my recent library visits have been marked by some version of this experience. My initial reaction was one of frustration. I complained to anyone who would listen of how people had lost all manner of etiquette. I toyed with writing something that would lament the bygone golden age of silence, wracking my brain for a play on words that featured an RIP to the library, but would imply that resting in peace was no longer an option as peace itself is what has died (I still haven’t quite worked it out — suggestions welcome). To afford myself some sort of foundation on which to build the essay, I read up on what other people had to say about the state of libraries.

Connecting 2.0(24)

There were several recurring themes; places to promote literacy, support education, and foster community. But above all these things, or perhaps underscoring them, is connection. Libraries are spaces where we connect — with ideas, with stories, with people.

Of course, now that we’re all connected all the time, libraries are undergoing something of an identity crisis. They can’t do what they were traditionally meant to do, because the knowledge which they were long the safeguarders of is now on the cloud. We no longer go to the library to browse the stacks, or enlist the help of our local librarian. We go there instead with our laptops, headphones, and a desire to tune out our surroundings. This has been my experience anyways, and I realized that, by using it as a study hall, not only was I morphing into a cranky and resentful cynic, I was also missing out on everything I had loved about the library when I was younger. I had, in my rigid view of how it ought to serve my present needs, lost sight of the magical elements that have always made it so special.

I have no idea how this series will unfold. I’ve resolved to visit the library for one hundred days, none of which will have an agenda. I want to use this time to reconnect with ideas beyond the ones on my screen. The plan is to observe my surroundings: to get lost in the stacks, to see things I might have missed, to rediscover the magic. And of course, to write it all down and put it on the internet.