Tour de Libraries

Today was a day of some firsts, first time to visit Cincinnati, first time to visit a subscription library, and first time to see closed stacks in a a public library. The student chapter of ALA sponsored a tour of several libraries in Cincinnati, including the Mercantile Library and Cincinnati Public Library (main and Bond Hill branch).

The Mercantile Library is in an old building in downtown Cincinnati. It has amazing architecture, and still uses a card catalog and date stamps. It's a subscription library founded in 1835. If I lived in Cincinnati, I would join. It would be worth a membership to be able to hang out there and read.

The public library was extremely interesting, too. We saw the renovations, so far, at the main library, and the new Bond Hill branch just opened a couple months ago. The renovations are far more user-oriented - a new teen space, computers grouped together in a technology area, and a restructuring of reference services. This is the first public library I've seen with closed stacks. It's interesting; this way they can keep the material, on-site even, but not have to have the space it would take if the same materials were open in a browsing area. It's kind of a nice compromise. We even had lunch at the main library, sitting out in the courtyard area.

The Bond Hill Branch is very interesting. They are trying to move to self-checkout and hope to get librarians and staff out from behind the desk and interacting with patrons. It would be very interesting to go back to see how that works, or even do an internship there.

The trip home was interesting, in that the car we were in developed problems, continuing to stall out when stopping, and threatening to die unless the gas pedal was pumped. When on cruise control, it worked better. We made it back, but all three of us were pretty relieved to get back without breaking down somewhere.