blog post: librarian.net

Posted in libraries | Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

My Trip to Seattle

I was in Seattle over the weekend. Sorry I didn’t call you…. The one thing on my to do list was to see the new library…. I had really liked the old library — though I understood why it needed updating — and I even liked the temporary library. I can’t say the same for the new library…. (view the complete blog post)

This textual representation of the Seattle Central Library was written by a notorious library consultant in Vermont and blogger, Jessamyn West. In this blog post West casts an overall negative review of the library and its architecture, despite appreciating the new organization and system of the library and some interesting spaces in the building. In particular this Seattle-ite is disappointed in the building which appears to her to have “been built for a bookless future,” and which she found physically difficult to navigate and uncomfortable to occupy. She has some very precise complaints illustrated and punctuated by her sardonic Flickr photo album. All in all she expresses the general complaint voiced in other popular-discourse blogs: that the library is not designed for its patrons.

Also of note, she claims that the current writers’ room is but a shadow of “glorious” writers’ room in the previous building. A testament to the death — or utter redundancy — of the author in the database age?