I´ve been an avid reader from a young age. For me, the library has always been a place of warmth, security, and refuge. A place to stay. Maybe that´s because the first library that I really consciously experienced and perceived was in a round tower in the middle of the town where I spent most of my childhood in Germany. I no longer have any idea how many steps I had to climb to enter the library, but I still remember the thick wooden beams that were up in the ceiling and partially crisscrossed the rooms. It was a small library over two floors, but it was lovely in the mood and atmosphere.
Over the years I stopped going to the library. Don´t ask me why but it took me kind of ten years during my early grown-up years to find back to this almost sacred place where I could spend hours if not days without end.
When I moved to the town where I live now, one of the first things was, to go and get myself my personal library card. The library itself was placed in an old train station. Small but incredibly comfortable and with two ladies running the place. Mrs. B & Mrs. B as I used to call them. Both had fun sparkling in their eyes, we're easy to talk to, and knew within no time what I loved to read.
That heavenly place stayed in that building for almost fifteen years before the entire library had to move to our town hall while the actual building, where the library was meant to settle down forever, was in a construction mood. When I heard the news, that our new library would be a place with around 400 square meters (sqm) I was beyond delighted. What a HUGE space. Imagine all the books they could put in it. Think!
The year the library was meant to move into the new building, a virus hit the entire planet and with that, everything went first on hold. And when it became clear, that things couldn´t go on as planned, at least not for the time being, it was quite clear that nothing would turn out the way it had been planned.
I didn´t mind that, because I had borrowed around 50 books before the library went into the annual Christmas vacation in 2020 and thought that it was the only way how I was able to help the ladies manage the moving from one place to the other. And they were delighted to see me taking all those books with me.
Over months I imagined how the new rooms would look like. I saw soft, crème white walls, lots of shelves, and even more books in them. A nice corner for the kids, a desk where Mrs. B. and Mrs. B would sit, always ready for a little chat, and maybe the one or the other chair I could sit in while starting to read a book I was about to take home with me.
Well, you better be careful of what you wish for. The new rooms are painted in a dazzling white that makes your eyes hurt. Combined with a green I don´t even have a name for. The entire atmosphere is cold, distant, and sterile. Where I had been looking forward to many new bookshelves with loads of new books standing in, is emptiness.
Most of the library is for the small kids. A long wall is covered with bookshelves, filled with books for kids, from a very young age to the ten-twelve-year-old. The rest is a, in my eyes, a catastrophic mix of a grey seating that looks rather uncomfortable, a blue beanbag, and a few boxes I have no clue what they are supposed to be.
The only things that I really like are the large pile of wooden books in the entrance area and the fact that I can now use a chip card to decide when I want to hand in books and when not. And to be honest, I miss one half of the former Mrs. B & Mrs. B team. Yes, one of the ladies decided to quit and since she´s gone, the atmosphere has changed a lot. And it seems that the new rules, the library now has have made things worse. Not sure if that is only due to the pandemic or some other reasons. All I know is that I don´t like it. In the past you could ask for a book or if something could be handled in a bit different way. And some weeks later I had an email in my mailbox, telling me the required book was now available. Not anymore.
So, yes, I am not happy at all with the new library. Every time I go in, I feel uncomfortable. And it is not that I must disinfect my hands and show them my vaccination code to get access. No. Nothing against lifting a place into the 21st century and using some modern techniques to make things easier. But why leave a warm and cozy atmosphere behind and replace it with a cold, sterile, and nothing but wasted space? Sorry, but I don´t get it.
A few weeks ago, the place the new library building is set is now finished. It looks all white, grey, and ugly. Right now, a real Christmas tree is standing there. The rest of the place is empty, except for a brown sculpture that is apparently supposed to look like a Christmas tree. It looks rather awful than good. And it stands so close to the damn building, I am still wondering why that is.
The pictures you see in this post were taken by me in March 2021.
Happy reading
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I'm so sorry about your library. I can relate. There was a time in Los Angeles where we voters voted YES to giving the libraries more money. What we didn't realize was that they would use the money to TEAR DOWN the beautiful old libraries from the 1930s (etc) and build gigantic, modern, cold, ugly libraries. Had I known, I would never have voted to give them more money.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry about the library too. And I know that I am not the only one who feels like that about our library... sad.
DeleteI'm sorry the library changed for the worse. Sometimes change isn't all good. :(
ReplyDeleteTrue words *sigh*
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