SF Main

I've fallen out of the habit of using the library. Either I buy books at a bookstore, or I look up the information on the Internet. But at the moment I'm researching a topic for which information is hard to find, so I decided to head off to the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library. I can walk there in twenty minutes from my work.

As I pored over the one book the helpful staff could dig up for me, I had to ask myself: "Why am I not taking advantage of this more?" I love doing research-heavy features, and the library has tons of books and a knowledgeable staff. Plus, SF Main has free wireless. And most days they're open until 8:00pm so I could go there after work, away from the distractions of home.

I know it's a little silly to extol the virtues of a library. As one of my co-workers put it, "Hey, wow! There's this place called a library, and they have books. That you can just borrow! For free!" But when was the last time you visited your local branch? Libraries are an endangered species. The town of Salinas recently decided to close their libraries, and funding cuts for other instances of Benjamin Franklin's innovation are commonplace around the nation. To keep abreast of developments in library land, and to find out just how much these institutions are being gutted, keep an eye on librarian.net. Libraries are a great resource, enriching communities with an egalitarian access to books and computer research. Don't let yours go away!

For those who have been in the Bay Area a while, I know SF Main has its critics. Nicholson Baker—whose name, despite appearances, does not come up in conversation all that often around here—wrote a piece revealing that the renovated main branch now holds fewer books than it used to. Baker, of course, frequently tries to raise public awareness about how libraries jettison information in the face of public apathy. I don't know if librarians hate him or worship him, because he places the blame at their feet but concedes that budget cuts force their hand. One of the essays collected in The Size of Thoughts bemoans the loss of the card catalog in the New York Public Library, and his book Double Fold reveals how libraries have been discarding precious copies of old newspapers, replacing them with the vastly inferior microfilm. Both are worth reading for anyone who cares about information and how we're allowing it to go away.