I have never actually lived anywhere with an outstanding library and I wish I had growing up. At least I get to enjoy having great libraries around me now. Will be quite beneficial when I transfer and focus on my English major and probably become a second home for me.
So the wife and I decided to go to the Coralville library first which I thought was very nice. I really like how there's the trees sticking up from the bottom floor up to the main floor and a fountain down there, was quite nifty. The DVD selection was pretty awesome and I was really surprised that you could check out movies, audiobooks, and cd's for free. The more I think back on it, I do remember checking out VHS from the small library in Dallas Center, IA when I was in 5th grade (very small selection). I went there wanting to find some graphic novels to read. I've been on this comic book kick lately and was really wanting to see if they had any. Sadly, they didn't so we got a few DVDs to watch and saw a sign on their door on the way out about them giving away free books and movies. Kelci and I ended up skipping one of our classes that Friday morning so that we could go when they started and get a bunch of stuff. Kelci really focused on the VHS. She has really been wanting Disney movies lately so she got all of them she could. I stuck to mostly picking out books. Since there were quite a few people and little space I really didn't have the time to look at each and every book to see if I wanted it or not. So I ended up really just grabbing books from authors I knew that I liked or ones that I wanted to check out. I also grabbed some really old looking ones just to have. It was really awesome seeing one with a person's name written in it and the year of 1908. Kelci has been talking about collecting old books and I am totally down with that. The fight for the best movies and books was a grueling one. Old people see a deal and they flock like a murder of crows. Kelci had more of a rough time than I did. One lady just kept bumping into her with her bag and Kelci finally started bumping back. I found it quite humorous in the car on the way home. So here is the pile of books and movies we grabbed piled onto our bed.
Was a great morning and definitely look forward to arranging our bookshelves once our roommate James moves out at the end of July. Waiting until then since we really don't have the space and we're moving our shelves again (we have so many books that when we rearranged our room we didn't arrange our bookshelves... It hurts looking at them at times due to how out of place the books are).
So a few days after our first trip to the Coralville Library we finally went to the Iowa City Public Library. I really didn't know where it was and often don't go downtown due to parking not being the greatest during the day. We decided to park in a parking ramp since using a meter only gives you so much time. This library is fantastic! I thought the Coralville Library was great (it still is) but this one just had so much more due to its size being a lot larger. The selection of books and movies is quite large and I had a tough time making up my mind. After much thinking I went with Neil Gaiman's The Sandman graphic novels and one Green Lantern graphic novel I needed to read since no where sells it (couldn't even get it online!). So I walked out of that library with one of those reusable tote bags full of 13 graphic novels.
Seeing all the different graphic novels and manga I could check out really shocked me. Didn't see a selection like that at any other library I've been to. Probably do have a selection like that due to all the different students that are around there. Makes sense and definitely smart to cater to everyone that they can.
Lastly a quote from one of The Sandman graphic novels I enjoyed that somewhat have to do with what I wrote about.
"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?"
~Neil Gaiman (The Sandman. Line spoken by Lucien, Librarian of the Dreaming.)
Oh and here's a photo of our cat Tavi (named after Tavi from Jim Butcher's Codex Alera book series) while I was reading. I'm sure there will be many other photo's of him on here. And yes, he likes sleeping in an empty 24 pack of pop/soda.
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