at home in the neighborhood: the library

One thing that has saved me time and again is my easy access to our neighborhood branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Only 9 blocks away, it is a pleasant walk to get there, so we go often. The building is small, as is the immediately available collection, but it has proved to be a safe haven for me on multiple occasions.

One of the first things I did after moving here was apply for my very own Brooklyn Library card, and since then it has been an uncommon thing for me to not have something checked out. With it I have access to books, music, and movies from this library system's collection, as well as those in the Queens and New York collections. I've never had a need to use it yet, but an inter-library loan is also available, which would connect me to various libraries across the country. If my branch doesn't have on its shelves a title I'm wanting, it's most likely that one of the other 59 branches does. To check it out, all I have to do is request it and, after a couple of days, it will be delivered to the branch location of my choice, ready and waiting for me to pick up.

I can also check out toys and games, for use upstairs in the Children's Department, for Garrett to play with. We held our ward's playgroup in the adjoining Toddler Room on numerous occasions last winter when it was too cold to go to a park. As the days have once again grown chilly, my friend and I have lately also taken advantage of this free space, its shelves lined with board books, on cold, gloomy days when our children need a warm place to stretch out and play.

Today Garrett and I attended our first official Story Time at our branch. It was great -- perfectly geared for toddlers with curious minds, minimal attention spans, and wandering legs. The Brooklyn Public Library has a pretty awesome Story Time program. When you first sign up, you're given a free book, and for every third time you attend after that, you receive more free books. I helped Garrett pick out one of my favorites: The Snowy Day by Brooklyn-born author Ezra Jack Keats. We'll read it together later, after he wakes up from his nap.

A public library is a constant in every community I've lived in, and aside from being the largest system I've had access to, the Brooklyn Public Library is set up in basically the same way as any other. But the Brooklyn Library has a certain charm attached to it that the others didn't have. Perhaps it has something to with the fact that Francie Nolan's library was in Brooklyn, "a little shabby old place [she] thought was beautiful." There's nothing spectacular about my neighborhood library branch, but I, too, find it beautiful.