Nipple (NYPL)

I bet you expected me to write about The Gates of Central Park. I saw them today, and yes, they are cool.

But there's been something much more significant on my mind since last Saturday, when I spent the later part of the afternoon sitting in the Microform Room of the New York Public Library, staring at page after page of the San Francisco Chronicle pass my eyes on a dimly lit screen. It was my first time at the library, and had always wanted to go in. The exterior is breathtakingly beautiful and stately, just inviting you to come in and browse through some of the most important books ever written.

My first impressions of the interior of the building were quite underwhelming. I was hoping for great halls filled with ancient books, but instead, I got great halls filled with emptiness. They also have one restroom in the entire building, and it took me about fifteen minutes to find it up on the top (third) floor. So far, a lot of empty space, a museum, a shop, and a hard-to-find bathroom.

So I wondered down to the first floor Microform Room, where I read, and printed (for 25 cents a page!) various articles from 1969 issues of the SF Chronicle. I had hoped to hit up the general book reserves after that, but they announced closing time, and I was forced out.

I hated it. But I knew I didn't give it a fair chance, and since I was stuck in a windowless room, I decided not to bitch about it here. But today, I went back, planning to hit only the General Reserves and the Reading Room. Now I have advanced to a complex love/hate relationship with NYPL.

Here is how you obtain a book (only three at a time!):
1) Look up the book on CATNYP, their online catalog
2) Write each call number, author, title, and your name and address on a call slip
3) Bring the call slip(s) to the call slip person, who assigns you a number.
4) Walk to the Reading Room, and wait for your number to come up on the screen.
5) Approximately 15 minutes later (one took more like half an hour), retrieve your book
6) Join the hordes of people in the 297 foot long reading room taking furious notes on your reading, since you can't take the book out of the room, and to my knowledge, there is no photocopier in there.
7) Sadly return the books knowing that they exist nowhere but in this building and you must go through the entire process again to get that one piece of information you forgot to write down.

So it's a monotonous process that leaves you wanting more. The ceiling is full of trompe l'oeil skies that look like what the sky would be like if the earth were surrounded by a gaseous swamp.

But why do I love it? Well first of all, your books get to take a ride on a book dumbwaiter from wherever they retrieve the books up to the Reading Room, which is pretty cool. I really want to know the inner-workings of the entire reserve system and get a glance at the library's collection. Also, you really can get pretty much get every book ever written.

But there's something so great about looking up the call number, then navigating through seemingly endless shelves of books and finally, in all the mess, finding the exact book you are looking for. Someone else doing this takes away that sense of accomplishment that I like to find in a library.

Overall, I got what I needed, but left knowning that I will return in the not too distant future because I got lazy and stopped writing complete notes.