Wheaton Public Library - part 1

I had some trouble visiting this library initially because they had shorter Sunday hours than I expected, but I did get back here and took lots of photos. Indeed, I probably could have taken even more, but the library was so busy that there were areas too crowded for me to get good shots of without faces.

Wheaton Public Library promotes its surrounding community and here, right inside the entrance, was a display showing what the downtown is supposed to look like after all the annoying construction is done there.

I love it when libraries support local authors (I have posted about the importance of this before). It's good to see WPL is finally building up such a collection, and is casting a fairly wide net for it too. If you can't read the fine print, it says they are defining "local" as being from seven different municipalities, including Carol Stream. Darn, that's just one municipality away from me being eligible!

Public library as used furniture store? Why not? All libraries already have used book sales, this is just a more ambitious version.

There are hidden treasures all over the library, like this really old (I couldn't see a date on it) map of Wheaton, framed and hanging in a secluded corner of the ground floor.

Speaking of treasures, here is one of the library's old card catalogs!  Sadly, the drawers are all empty now and it's just nostalgic furniture.

I didn't head down to Children's, but I took this picture of it from the ground floor. This overlapping section of the half-underground Children's section gives more light and sense of space to the lower level.

 Opposite those windows is this tiny section of sci fi/fantasy paperbacks. It's an approach not without precedent, many libraries already separate their sci fi/fantasy books into a separate collection. But here, hardcovers are integrated into the regular collection and softcovers alone are separate. Is that because softcovers are more browseable than hardcovers? I would love to hear some justification for this.

This is an exciting service, though I can't imagine many public libraries can afford it. WPL owns a collection of "fine art" (prints mainly, we're not talking original Van Gogh's here) and you can check them out like books. Just browsing this section is like being in a mini-art gallery. I'd be interested in knowing what their circ stats are like.