Now when I visit it's always meh. They have sacrificed breadth and density for "curation" and "experience spaces".
The space between the book shelves seems to have almost doubled. Why?
Bring back super high dense book shelving filled with interesting stuff.
Except that's because the library was tiny. The denseness was a necessity and the library was constantly trying to get rid of books to make room for newer books.
Thankfully they eventually replaced that tiny library with a much bigger one. And the one we live near now is also much bigger and much better. I think the kids section of the library is probably double the size of the entire library we had growing up, with more books as well.
In the late 90s, there was a cornucopia of amazing books available - one was on programming Windows, and came complete with a CD in the back with a fully working copy of Visual Studio C++ 1.52.
I decided to poke into the library my kids go to for story time and see what computer books there were. It was truly bleak. There was really nothing that would bring back the sense of discovery I had as a kid going to the library.
Accessibility is probably a factor, narrow spaces are hard to navigate with a wheelchair.
I guess the benefit is that now two people in wheelchairs can pass each other, thus avoiding one of them needing to spend a few seconds going backwards, were two people in wheelchairs to travel in opposite directions in the same lane.
Yay. Totally worth halving the inventory for, not.
Sure thing but your community would have to pay insignificantly more in local taxes
The primary goal of libraries is to educate the public - not to employ librarians, right?