What's Not to Love About the New Darien Library?

Imagine this: you’ve bought your kid the ultimate birthday present, a working gas mini car or a fabulous treehouse, and the first thing he says when he sees it is, “It’s not blue!”

So that’s me right now, the spoiled brat criticizing the fabulous, glorious new Library, with its conveyer-belt book-return system and its working TV monitors everywhere and its Wii downstairs for the kids and its automated check-out system.

I’ll admit in advance that I’m the crotchety person in the corner carping about the old days; but there are a few things I miss about the old library, and things I don’t really love about the new library.

Our new library is grand, but in a warehousey kind of way rather than an elegant posh library kind of way. My favorite libraries are so grand that they elevate their contents with their very grandeur. Even a Jackie Collins novel would seem cerebral in a hushed, marble-floored, carved-ceiling cathedral.

But I can live without posh grandeur. I guess what bothers me a little is how books seem somehow de-emphasized in our new library. The stacks don’t reach high; they’re mostly down low. Which means that in order to accommodate all the books, in say, the Nonfiction 800 series on the second floor, the books are filed in a winding snake of shelves that is incomprehensible without a librarian’s help. In the old days, I could look up a book’s reference number in the computer catalog and go right to it. Now, even equipped with the book’s number, I need assistance.

Another whiney complaint: Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that all the fiction there, just to the left of the front door in the room with the café? That little bit of space? Shouldn’t the fiction have a whole room of fiction holiness?

I’ll admit that one of my main goals at the library is finding a DVD to watch. And it’s so appropriate that they’re right there, near the front door, waiting for me. It’s better than Blockbuster.  But one day when I went in I asked the librarian where to find Super-Size Me, and I was directed to the shelves of DVDs. I couldn’t find it, although it was in the catalog. I had to pester another librarian who revealed to me that documentaries are filed separately, upstairs, categorically like the nonfiction books. It occurs to me that documentaries (and Super-Size Me is one of them) can be just as entertaining as regular movies. Why then are they shunted upstairs? They are difficult to find there and you certainly wouldn’t stumble across an entertaining documentary while perusing the DVDs downstairs. A documentary that you would not only enjoy, but would feel satisfied about forcing your children to watch, and they might even actually enjoy it too. No, you have to know exactly what documentary you want and pester a librarian to help you find it.

Which brings me to the librarians. I’m wondering if they’re feeling more harassed lately, since people like me are having such a hard time finding things. I have noticed that they don’t have their usual desks, particularly in the children’s room (there’s a table in the middle of the room, but it seems very informal). I sort of liked knowing where the librarians were. I liked that they had a nice desk to sit behind with lists of Newbury Prize winners and Pulitzer Prize winners posted behind them. Librarians have always been important people in my life, and I feel that they’ve been somehow demoted with their little tables.

What the library is good for: it’s really good for kids. I saw a billion kids studying together there at the end of the last school year. Every table was occupied with hordes of kids. And this is good, I guess. The library should be an appealing place for kids, but as a place for intellectual rather than social pursuit.

Which brings me to the Teenager/Tweenager Room downstairs. With the Wii. Now, my kids appreciate the Wii, because we don’t have one at home. But do we really need a Wii at the library? What are we telling our kids is important? That they have to have electronic games everywhere they go? My daughter and her friend spent hours one day in that room taking their pictures using the Mac computer. Now my daughter disdains our PC at home because we cannot use it to take multiple multi-colored pictures of her and her friends. And that room – one day my son was playing on the computer in there while I finished some research. I brought my stuff in and sat on the comfy chair there and was doing my thing while he played. A librarian spotted me from afar, came in, and booted me out of the room. There are no grownups allowed in there. Meanwhile, there were two other women and their kids talking to each other in the same room, but they were not booted out by the librarian. I believe that only grownups who are reading are kicked out of the room. Grownups who are conversing loudly are welcome.

Is it necessary that kids have a room that grownups cannot be in at the library?  Where is the comfy chair that I can sit in and still be on the same floor as my kids? What does it say to the kids when an adult who is quietly reading is asked to leave?

Which reminds me of the Periodicals Room at the old library. That was a nice, comfy room to hang out and read in silence. I miss that room. Does anybody else miss that room? It seemed plush somehow. As did the children’s room, which was cozy and magical, especially when they had the Harry Potter decorations everywhere. The new one is a little warehousey still.

Now I’m going to qualify all of my complaining. We love the library. We’re there several times a week and we appreciate everything that’s there. The new checkout system is fun and the conveyor belts are great. The system of reserving books and holding them for you with your name in big visible letters right behind the front desk where you can go and get them yourself rocks. The rows and rows of computers and computer equipment are a fabulous asset to the community. The helpfulness of the librarians is helpful.

But I, for one, miss some of the splendor of libraries where books are revered.