Highlawn Library

Don’t come here if you are actually planning to do some work that requires silence to concentrate.
This is by far, a local library, it is no means an «intellectual» library in terms of book selection and visitors who behave accordingly. Children run around unattended and if attended, adults don’t bother to control their children. Two or three young teens run around, huddle around the computer playing video games. Some adults bring their crying toddlers in their strollers adding more noise to the laughing kids chasing each other. Librarians don’t care despite being seated in the center of the library.

I bring my toddler to story time and play and he loves it, only wish it was longer but very nice program :)

This is one of the worst libraries in a very poorly managed system. Brooklyn libraries are mandated by the central management to be «user friendly.» (A librarian at another branch sort of secretly explained this to me.) That means kids can run around and everyone can talk as loud as they want and eat snacks and talk on their phones any time they want. Some libraries like the nearby Ulmer Park manage to be relatively civilized most of the time, but Highlawn is horrible. If actual reading is your goal, get your book and run for home. Concentrating on a computer is usually impossible. Two or three teenaged friends will stand around a computer user and laugh and talk about Facebook or whatever until someone (me) points out this violation of one of the few rules to the librarian, who is ignoring the situation from ten feet away. While all those other kids are running around and yelling.
The building is also terrible — a round building built in 1970 or so. One big round room with an office and extra meeting room off one side. So the screaming running talking children are all over the place and can be heard from anywhere. It should have been torn down and replaced, but instead a few years ago they remodeled it. Sometimes there is some kind of session in the separate room with yelling children. Naturally they like to keep the door open.
It looks like the redo was designed by a first year interior design student at a junior college. Garish colors (chartruse and magenta — seriously), stupid furniture. The «comfortable low chairs» in the lounge area mentioned on the website are about six inches lower than a normal chair and twice as wide, so they are hard to get out of and take up a lot of space for no reason. And encourage teenagers to hang out and talk and laugh and eat and drink. Since the big low chairs take up so much room there is a shortage of actual library tables and chairs which are often full.
The librarian desk is user-​friendly style only regular desk height so adults are talking down to the top of the librarians head. Perfect for small children who want to talk to one of the rude employees.
The magazines and newspapers are now completely disorganized and stacked up on regular library bookshelves that the newspapers don’t actually fit on. It is impossible to find any periodical, which is probably stolen anyway. A couple of years of Consumer Reports, used by a lot of people for research, are stacked up behind the desk in no particular order.
There were some wierd magenta cloth tubes hanging down in the middle of the place, apparently for sound reduction. Now there’s just the hooks they were hanging from for some reason.
The carpeting from the remodel, in several mismatched patterns, is now grossly stained from spilled drinks the patrons get to run around with and has never been cleaned.
Avoid this library unless like me it is the closest one and you use it to pick up reserved books and DVD’s. The website based hold system works very well. Particulary any time school is out, although because it is also pretty much a day care center there can be running crying children and babies in the single library room at any time.

Decent library with free wifi. They have most books I need, if not, I just have the books sent here. It’s shaped like a big circle with only one floor; so looking for books isn’t a pain. It’s an okay library in my opinion. It’s located near two schools so sometimes you see a whole bunch of kids running around here but come when school is in session for the kiddos and you’re good.