When I set out for this cross-country trip, my plan was to visit a bunch of libraries along the way (tag: road trip), admire and promote their unique community-centered practices, and share photos as I go. It has been interesting. I haven’t blogged about even a third of the libraries I’ve dropped by, mostly because of connectivity issues (no interwebs when camping). I can testify now, it is true, American libraries really do differ greatly from town to town, state to state, and region to region. I’ve ranted quite a bit over the past few years about community-centered and user-centered design principles, and it’s funny to look around and see how much of that is really happening concurrently and unconsciously along side the heady, academic talk of such practices.

To the point: I had a great library patron experience in Jackson, Wyoming the other day. Rather than coming in as some kind of outsider, some kind of bloggy library critic, I visited the Teton County Library as a patron with some real questions. My girlfriend and I had backpacked +/- 25 miles in Grand Teton National Park and had encountered everything from easily identifiable columbine and lupine, moose and marmots to quite a few more unusual plants and animals along the trail. As a temporarily unemployed librarian on a limited budget traveling cross-country, it should come as no surprise that I didn’t want to buy every field guide available for every region along the road. After a brief tour around the library, I settled down with a pile of books and sorted out what was what.

I don’t want to ignore innovative practices at Teton County Library in any way with this post. Please look around their well-designed website, browse the area about their solar panels, the green building, and its sustainable operations. Pay mind to the fact that there is an electric car workshop right around the corner, they’ve been doing claymation workshops for summer reading (and that kids are reading a TON of books there). Look at all of that stuff. Myself, I just got caught up in the realization that as a traveler of the USA, public libraries are a piece of infrastructure that is invaluable, not replicated by any other service, and they are truly hyperlocal. They may be nodes or hubs of connectivity, but they retain local identity. There is NO OTHER WAY to get the kind of free local information I got at the Teton County Library. Its important to recognize that and consider it as a core piece of your library’s service delivery.

Just to hammer the point home: as travelers, we were referred to the Teton County Library by a 2 year old “Road Trip USA” travel guide purchased for $1 at the Skokie Public Library bookstore. The Teton County Library is such a valued resource that travel books write about it. Shouldn’t that be something every neighborhood library aspires to?

In Bozeman, Montana now- another great library town. Check back soon!

Probably not.

The building itself is pretty fantastic, as the architect was James W. Hammond of Skidmore Owings & Merrill. It is a vintage 1960 building, and with that come blessings and curses. The original furniture and interior is amazing, but as libraries begin to reconsider their program for the digital age much of it can seem cumbersome and inflexible (that’s modernism for ya). Despite these challenges, Skokie is moving forward with some interesting initiatives. The one I’m most excited about is the Media Lab that the gentlemen I mentioned earlier are running with.

The Media Lab is under construction right now, so I will not show any pictures just yet, but I believe it will be a much smaller, sort of modular version of the media creation extravaganza Chicago Public Library has over at their YouMedia space.  This is an interesting and exciting way of approaching the problem of new media literacy in our networked, participatory culture because the services Skokie Public Library will be providing are small-scale, relatively low-cost, and the whole project looks measurable and replicable from my vantage point.

Here’s a few pics from the library.

Check out the green roof, as seen from the staff lounge.

There’s a movie theater in the library…

There was no way to show this, but in the storytime room, the ceiling was full of little fiberoptic cables making it look like a night sky when the lights were out.

Finally, a nice circulating video game collection.

The Oak Park Main Library is a huge new building: 104,000 square feet and 3 floors.  There are two other branch libraries that I didn’t get to, the Dole Library and the Maze Branch.

The thing that really caught my eye about this library was the art collection and their attention to the furniture in the building.  This should not really come as a surprise, since Oak Park is “home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings and houses, with 25 structures built between 1889 and 1913“.  Also noteworthy is the fact that our old boy Ernest Hemingway came from this town, and the Oak Park Library collects materials about him.  Unrelated decorative arts note: check out the bathroom tiles in Hemingway’s house on Key West.  Beautiful.

My favorite pieces in the Oak Park Library’s art collection were the Chris Ware drawings (1) (2) (3) and best of all the two wonderful pieces of Higgins Art Glass.  As a Mid-Century design geek and collector of cool looking stuff, I’ve always coveted Higgins glass mobiles and I couldn’t believe this lucky library patron just chilling out underneath one.  Jealous.

Also, all art and greenroof projects aside, it should be clear that there’s some excpetional librarianship going on around here, as the Genre-X programs that I’ve written about before come out of this place.

Stick with the PLA Blog, I visited another great library in the Chicago area today and you’ll be able to read about it soon.

The ALA 2009 Annual Conference begins tomorrow in this fine city. It is going to be a blast, and we’ve got a whole crew of bloggers bringing you the action here on the PLA Blog, so pay attention!

But…

Before I get all caught up in conference mayhem tomorrow, I’d like to share a few pictures from another wonderful library I visited today as part of the cross-country road trip. After a long hike in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we headed north toward Chicago and along the way we stopped at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.  Ohio libraries are in a bind; it has been in the news recently that Governor Strickland wants to reduce library funding by as much as 50%.  Read more. It only took a few minutes walking around this magnificent urban library to see what a bad idea those budget cuts would be.

After identifying myself as a blogger for PLA, the PR folks from this public library were kind enough to lead me around and give me a small tour of the facility. Of course the tour had to be brief, our dog was patiently waiting outside.  Have a look at a few photos from the library.

Check out the entrance with the book fountain. Classic.  I must admit I found it a little funny- I’m pretty sure the library prefers if you don’t pour water all over their books

I love this drive up window. Because I’m in the middle of a road trip myself, I’m finding drive-through customer interactions particularly interesting. Serving a drive-through patron is totally different from a reference or circulation desk transaction. How can you do it best at your library?

The Teen Spot is new, bright, and lively and the librarians were excited to talk about their space, materials, and programs.

I think these lockers in the Teen Spot are a good idea.  Teens gotta put their stuff somewhere, right?

This is just one view of the great looking space.

The Tech Loft must offer 100 computers terminals (I didn’t count), all of which were occupied by 1 or more people. It was absolutely slammed with people and it may have been the busiest place in the building. What does that say about the future direction of library services?

Thanks again to the kind folks at the library in Cincinnati! Stay strong saveohiolibraries advocates! Readers, look forward to more stories from Chicago!

View Larger Map

I think this is a pretty interesting situation. As I understand it, the original Fort Mill Library was in a building downtown. Roughly 10 years ago, when Baxter Village was built, the developer donated the land to the county so that they could build a new library here. The building is new and beautiful, used by the residents of this rather interesting suburban experiment as well as folks who live in neighboring areas. I have to imagine that the older building in downtown Fort Mill (a pretty cute little town) had quite a few challenges associated with its age and architecture.

I wonder if any other readers can point to specific instances of cooperation between real estate developers and public library systems similar to this situation? This seems like an interesting merger of public and private interests for the benefit of everyone involved. I know ideas like this were floating around at Brooklyn Public Library, but never came to fruition. Anybody else?

Enjoy some pics of this bright, clean library. Note the rental book section- for $2 you can get the hot items immediately, rather than wait in line. How do you feel about that arrangement?

View Larger Map

The main library in Roanoke was really great, but I was really frustrated by a bad policy: “no photos unless approved by the director”.  Because of this, I can’t show you the cool plastic hoods hanging over the tables in the teen room that appeared to direct sound so that a group could listen to whatever music they wanted without bothering everyone else.  I also can’t show you the Virginia Room, a great local history and genealogy collection located in one wing of the library.  I would have asked for the director’s permission, but she was in a meeting (as a director often is) and nobody else there was authorized to allow me to take photographs.  Can anyone offer me a good reason why picture-taking requires permission from the highest level?  This is not unique to the Roanoke Library.  Here’s a few pictures from the outside.

update: thanks @justnathan for the link to Roanoke Libraries on Flickr!

View Utica Public Library in a larger map

Utica Public Library is a grand building that shows the kind of commerce the Erie Canal brought to upstate New York back in the 19th century.  The building opened in 1904 and it still serves the people of Utica today.  Read more about Utica and the city’s historyhere.

The move is giving me the chance to do something else I’ve always wanted to do: drive across this great country.

There’s really nothing I like better than checking out local public libraries on a road trip, so PLA Blog readers get ready to see some cool spots!

If your library is on the route below you just might see me, my girlfriend, and our dog Nanuk show up at the reference desk with a question or two.

View Road Trip in a larger map

Nanuk is a good dog, but she can’t read or speak.  We will be asking the questions, not her.

If you want us to visit your library, drop a comment!  We will do our best to come by! Otherwise, see you in Chicago for the ALA Annual Conference!