Save NYPL!

Marsh and I had such a fabulous time In New York last year, the highlight for me was our tour of NYPL, so I was distressed to see that they are facing a pretty big funding cut.  There's a campaign against the cuts, this was my 2 cents:

"I'm a librarian from the UK and visited NYPL last year.  The stunning architecture apart what impressed me most about it was the open and welcoming attitude.  I was amazed to find that anyone could step in to read and to enquire.  It's a kind of openness that one doesn't find everywhere and that makes it even more important to preserve.

In times of economic hardship libraries are often the only places people can go to access current employment publications and access valuable IT resources.  Without these, ordinary people become disenfranchised from  our digital culture.  Tough economic times should prompt us to safeguard library services, not cut them."  

The library is open to anyone who lives, works, studies or pays property taxes in the State of New York, that's 19,541,453 residents alone.  They also make special provision to highlight specific library resources and help for job seekers.  This is just one instance of library cutbacks threatening services, there are many more across the UK and further afield.  I realise that I don't have the unenviable job of balancing the books every year, and that there's a lot to pay for with less and less money, but I believe that cutting funding to public libraries is nothing but a short term solution.

Nuggets from New York : two

The joy of NYPL

This rather smacks of boring friends and family to death with seemingly endless pictures of places they have never been nor want to go to, but I just can't stop talking about NYPL and how wonderful it is. Two things: NYPL and 'wonderful'.

NYPL: I pronounce it nipple, which bestows upon it a charm all of its own- a place of true academic pleasure. The motto of my University is about nipples but I have never felt about Cambridge the way I do about NYPL. I feel my pronunciation of this joyful institution is entirely justifiable. Their catalogue, catNYP, is obviously intended to be pronounced as catnip. NYPL- obvious.

Wonderful: A marvel; a genuine jaw-dropper. Aside from the truly beautiful architecture, including a room entirely constructed from marble and a plastic moulded ceiling which looks more like wood than wood does, the true wonder of NYPL is its admissions policy. Anyone can use it. Not just people from NYC, or even from New York state; you don't even have to be an American (and it doesn't help if you are). Anyone can just turn up, order a book and read it in what has to be one of the most palatial reading rooms I have ever seen. They also send fetching slips around the building by pneumatic tube.

My overall impression of Manhattan (I have to confess to not travelling much further abroad) was of a city that was too busy for me; the perceived unfriendliness of the 'herds' of commuters, shoppers and tourists was completely unjustified, when I spoke with people they were open, honest and often passionate about their city. What I couldn't get over was the shabbiness of the place, the tourist areas were tacky as I expected and the richer areas markedly leafier than the poor ones, but on the whole everything looked like it had been updated in the late 80s, early 90s and badly needed a re-fit. It was unlike London, Beijing or Shanghai which had been my benchmarks, all in all it was more like the Glasgow of my childhood- full of promise, but stuck in 1988.

I expected that I'd be disappointed with the standard New York fare and I was, it had the fake glossy veneer of the movies, but was dull and prosaic in its quotidian reality. The exception was the view from the top of the Rockerfeller Centre, which was simply breathtaking. The old wisdom of doing what you want rather than what the guide book tells you rings true. All the things I went for: brewpubs, NYPL, meeting Liz who I hadn't seen for too long, eating breakfast in Absolute Bagels (where they sell cream cheese by the half-pound) with ordinary New Yorkers; that's what made it a real trip to remember for me.

All of this is without mentioning the killer wildlife in Central Park, including the rabbit lady. I have to tell you about the rabbit lady. I will tell you about the rabbit lady, I promise.