The Gorgeous Salt Lake City Library

Latter Day Saints Temple

When I was in Salt Lake City last week (I was training people on Friends groups for the Utah State Library), I stopped by to see Beth Elder, 

Beth

the SLC Public Library director as she’s a member of BCR’s Public Libraries Advisory Group. 

What an impressive library!  It’s an amazing building in its own wonderful square with a lovely garden, water features and fabulous views of the mountains.  The lobby is just astounding.  It has glass elevators (that gave me vertigo when standing on the fifth floor looking straight down) that let you see their mechanisms, especially from the beautiful roof garden

Roof garden

(with trees no less – talk about a green roof).  From the roof you can see all of SLC and the surrounding Wasatch mountains, and there’s a wonderful walkway

leading six stories down to the square

that can be accessed day or night for what I imagine would be incredible sunset views.

The spiral staircase takes you down to the fourth floor where a really neat fireplace (one of several) provides a great reading nook.  Art work abounds and there’s a changing art exhibition space.  There’s also an art gallery leasing space in the lobby.  The woman at the gallery credited the library with its existence as they invited artists to do a show in the space which evidently worked out so well that two of the artists decided to lease the space and 16 Utah artists display their work there.  The lobby

SLCPL Lobby

also has its own Friends library store with lots of great merchandise for readers, Scrabble fans etc.  Used books are only a very small part of their offerings. 

Each floor has loads of internet stations (there are 163 in the library), plus tons of wired study tables (all with great views) where you can plug in your laptop to take advantage of their wireless internet access.  There’re self check units on each floor, and many shelving units have display cases and catalogs on the end.  The architect really took advantage of the scenic location as little balconies are inserted all over the place.

The children’s area is by itself on the lowest level, so no sound worries there.  It has loads of displays – currently, different artists are displaying dioramas that look like they are meant for children as gentle touching is encouraged and some have relics of the “ancient past” (I love the one showing a 33rpm record, an old can opener, and a part of a child’s telephone toy – amazing that these items are now antiques).  There are also all sorts of shadowboxes using inventive tactics to produce cool sounds from a variety of ordinary objects like toys (The Sound of Art by the Visual Art Institute).  Alcoves abound with a wonderful Attic room with wood beams and multi level seating – perfect for a family reading a book together.  Other nooks have smaller kid sized doors that lead to computers or just weird white geometric spaces

perfect for privacy when you want to call a friend (as a young customer was doing when I went in to check it out). 

Little wonder that the people of SLC are in love with their library.  Beth told me that despite the economy they just got permission to open two new branches in the Glendale and Marmalade areas (so if you have any great ideas for opening new branches, please let me know).  Obviously, SLC citizens realize the important part libraries can play in the recovery and how vital they are to helping people find jobs and prepare for new careers (to say nothing of the free entertainment and enrichment opportunities they offer).  In fact, the mayor was thinking of putting a new police, fire and emergency services complex next to the library, but after more that 400 comments about this potential blight to the Library Square setting he’s decided against it.  Just what we all need, our residents fighting our battles and advocating for us!