Loitering at the Library

Standing on the mezzanine where the fiction is, overlooking the second-floor reading room.

I got another chance to go hang out for couple hours at the Library. I came very close to tapping out my sister's library card, adding nineteen items to the nineteen already on it. Thought that latter might have included the three DVD I returned. Last week I was just browsing and gazing. This time I went looking for specific things related to WIP, including research related to my stories and unfinished book reviews.

I am understandably eager to spend some of this precious late evening quiet time looking at my haul. So I'm posting some of the pictures I took last Thursday with brief comments. Remember this is the library of my childhood and has not been my library for over nine years. But of course in a sense it will always be my library. I love this library. Throughout my childhood and well into my twenties this library was a landscape in my dreams. As a young child I fantasized of living here.

Here I was standing under the mezzanine and aiming towards the reading room though I caught the edge of the media shelves--CD, DVD, audio books etc. The section of shelve directly to my right are the last of the 900s in the Non-fiction

Here I just turned a few degrees right and aimed down the center aisle. That is the same 900s shelf to the left. The 100s begin behind me and to the right. The elevator is to my left.

The children's picture book area on the first floor. There are at least two more of those carpet-lined bathtubs scattered about the J area. There is a separate room for the YA or 11 years and up which I didn't go into.

This is the story hour area. The far wall is part of the chapter book fiction for 2nd to 5th graders. There is a separate room for their NF and Reference books which I didn't take pictures of because there were kids studying in there.

The story hour area from the other side, showing the carpeted 'bleachers'. This was put in around the time I entered Jr High and thus graduated to the upstairs collection. Back then you had to be 13 to check out items upstairs without a note from your parent. Back then the YA shelves were just beginning to be kept separate and were a fairly small section of shelves at the end of the upstairs reading room. Now they have a room of their own.

This is the other end of the chapter book fiction. The backside of the story hour amphetheater is ten feet or so to my right and the picture book area directly behind me.