(The prompt from two weeks ago; written belatedly, thanks to sickness.)
I realised after I drafted this post that Robert discussed the exact same thing ... which I choose to interpret as good taste on both of our parts.
Anyway: I think the Edmonton Public Library is awesome.
The library was my first connection to the institutional machinery of The City. I've never been part of any community leagues; everything I know about the municipal government comes from the City section of the Edmonton Journal. But I've been going to the Whitemud Crossing library ever since it was in the basement of Southgate and I was young enough to be excited about getting stickers in the Summer Reading Club.
What I love about the library is its attitude towards knowledge and the community. If you think of librarians as gatekeepers of knowledge, they're the inviting, open, forward-thinking kind, not elitist cultural custodians who are trying to maintain their grip on power (yes, I am kind of thinking of the literary institution). The library is also forward-thinking in its attitudes towards texts: it's an institution which realises that in order to best provide knowledge to the people, it has to change and adapt. Instead of freaking out about the Kindle like the rest of the myopic publishing industry, which seems to exalt the codex as the holy grail/be-all-end-all of print technology, the library does things like add audiobooks and .epub repositories to their collection. These attitudes are well-reflected in the EPL website, which I'm pretty impressed with. It's one of the best-designed websites I've come across -- easy-to-use and actually functional.
The EPL branches aren't just repositories of knowledge; they're sites of community, which put an emphasis on public spaces. One of the library's functions is community programming, which I didn't find out about until I started looking around at all of the pamphlets and posters a couple of years ago: computer classes, poetry readings, book club nights, English conversation circles. At the Whitemud Crossing library, in the magazine section, there's a nice, quiet lounge area arranged in front of a fireplace; there are chairs and tables and carrels everywhere, in quieter areas and louder common areas.
I kind of love that the library is a space where I can go and check out the fifteen books I requested through the online hold system, and then trawl through the fantasy/sf section for half an hour, while my grandmother uses the free internet and reads Chinese newspapers. It's impressive when an institution is savvy enough to serve a varied population like that.
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