Silence, Please!

Archival photos of four children's reading rooms in the New York Public Library system appeared as a back page feature in the New York Times Book Review (November 12, 2023). The photos were gathered by Erica Ackerberg, the Book Review's photo editor.

Out of the four photos, the one that especially caught my attention is the photo taken in 1903 in East Harlem's Aguilar branch, named, said the caption, for Grace Aguilar, a 19th-century Anglo-Jewish writer. Above the checkout counter was a sign that said in big letters SILENCE.

I'm old enough to remember the days when libraries were quiet sanctuaries for bookworms like me. They were places where speaking loudly was unthinkable. Not anymore. And it's not just the patrons. The library staff, not setting a good example, are just as loud.

The only time a patron is admonished is when their mobile phone starts to ring. "Please turn your phone off in the library," a library staffer will announce. Otherwise, the loud talk is ignored and not a word of disapproval is uttered by the librarian or other library employee.

The New York Public Library Eliminates Overdue Fines

Better Late Than Never by Jenn McKinlay (Berkley Prime Crime, 2016), is part of her series called Library Lover's Mysteries, featuring Lindsey Norris, a young woman who is director of the public library in Briar Creek, a small town on the Connecticut shore.

The Briar Creek Public Library is holding its first annual fine amnesty day event, which brings a flood of overdue books, including one that's twenty years overdue and was checked out by a popular high school  English teacher around the time of her death. The book, after twenty years, is in pristine condition. Was the killer responsible for returning the book? Lindsey, who's also an amateur sleuth, intends to find out.

In the meantime, Ms. Cole, "an old-school librarian," who is "nicknamed 'the lemon' because of her puckered disposition," fervently disapproves of the fine amnesty day.

Ms. Cole comes across to Lindsey as "a punitive sort who enjoyed using fines and shushing to curb their patrons' naughty behavior."

I can only imagine how Ms. Cole, the "old-school librarian," would react to the New York Public Library's recent decision to follow other library systems by doing away with overdue fines altogether. The library felt the fines were burdensome to its low-income patrons and prevented them from adequately using the library and its many services.

The New York Public Library's Most Checked Out Books

The New York Public Library, of which I am a longtime card-carrying member, celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.

As part of the celebration, NYPL's librarians have listed in the winter/spring 2020 issue of The New York Public Library Now magazine the ten most checked out books "ever since [they] opened [their] doors" in 1895.

Among these books are To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1984 by George Orwell, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.

Below is a list of the ten books:

1. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
2. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
3. 1984 by George Orwell
4. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
7. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
8. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
10. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

And one Honorable Mention: Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Stonewall 50 Commemoration At The New York Public Library

The Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 exhibition is slated for viewing at the New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, from February 14 to July 14, 2019. It will be on the third floor, in the Rayner Special Collections Wing & Print Gallery.

"This exhibition," announced the New York Public Library Now magazine (Winter/Spring 2019)," illustrates this history [of gay liberation] through the photographs of Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies, who captured the pivotal events of this era and changed the ways that LGBTQ people perceived themselves."

Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 will also, continued Now, the library publication, feature "other items from the Library's vast archival holdings in LGBTQ history, including ephemera, periodicals, and more."

Dreams And Knowledge, And Real Estate Musical Chairs?

The West Side Spirit
242 West 30th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10001

Attn: Letters-to-the-Editor

May 16, 2000

To the Editor:

In Felicia Lee's "Coping" column in the Sunday New York Times (March 26) entitled "Dreams and Knowledge, Under One Roof," she neglected to mention that the Columbia Branch of the New York Public Library on West 113th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, has only been in its present location for four years. In January of 1986, it left its previous site on West 113th Street in the Butler Library building at Columbia University.

Now, four years after the move, Ms. Lee writes that the "good news for the neighborhood" is that the library will be relocated to "a space 10 times as big down the block" later this year or the early part of next year. "It's new home," she reports, "will be in another Columbia building."

This is the only branch in the library system that I know of that is being bounced around like this. What troubles me, as a frequent user of the Columbia Branch, is how long will the university allow it to stay in the new location? Will the branch, every four or five years, be the victim of what amounts to a real estate version of musical chairs? Perhaps the public library should consider putting the branch in a building that it owns and operates.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

Note: The above is a previously unpublished letter.

NYC Graffiti Watch

The following message was written on a scrap of paper and taped to the wall behind the toilet at the New York Public Library's Morningside Heights branch on Broadway and 113th Street:

"Dear Library Visitor,
Please don't throw/flush unnecessary objects in me.
For I choke!
Also, don't pee on my seat. It's yucky and I enjoy
tasting your pee rather than wearing it.
Love,
Your Toilette"

The message was taken down the next day. It'll never be known whether the message was written by a library staffer or a fellow patron.