Eagle Library

Being a resident of Speedway for the second time and having lived out of state for much of my adult life, I don’t think I had been in an Indianapolis Public Library since I was still in high school. Necessity brought me here back in June on the second day of our power outage during the bad storms that hit us.
The first day of the power outage, before the storms progressed, my dad and I passed some of the time by going to the Speedway Library, as well as a local watering hole, hoping the electricity would be back on in a couple hours. To our dismay, Speedway and much of the surrounding area was hit even harder that night, causing us to be out of power for nearly three days. So, we needed internet access on day two in order to pay a bill online. It was discovered Speedway Library had an outage now as well hence our trek over to the Eagle Library.
I had never been in this branch myself before nor since. While I am grateful that they had some power and a computer available, I don’t care for the ones you have to use standing up. There was a long wait for the other computers with seats. We weren’t planning to stay and surf the web so we opted for the available standing PC which offers less time for usage. I believe you only get fifteen minutes on those until your session is up.
Paying the bill took much longer than expected and what was only maybe ten minutes felt to me like an eternity at the time. Standing at this computer might have been more tolerable if it wasn’t so hot in there. It was sweltering with absolutely no circulation. I am guessing that they were running on generated power from speaking to the lady next to me. They had the computers on and all of the overhead lights, but no air conditioning. Had the lights been OFF and some windows open, it really could have made a difference. The windows did not even appear to have the ability to be opened. What really bothered me was all of the children crammed in this place. It was quite crowded and if I was that uncomfortable after a few minutes, I didn’t think it was safe for kids to be in there nor the few elderly people I saw come in. I think they undoubtedly had to be in danger of suffocating or getting heat stroke. In my opinion, the library should have been closed that day if more steps could not be taken to make it cooler inside.
Being summertime, most of these kids probably had nowhere else to go during the day. If it were me and I had the money for admission, I would take them to the nearest swimming pool, but I don’t know the personal affairs of their parents. Had it been under different circumstances, it might not have been such a bad experience, but I found it to be unbearable. In hindsight, I would have just suggested we find a nice place with a/​c and wi-​fi in which to charge the laptop, pay the bill, have a cool drink and ride the heat out.
I don’t foresee needing to return to Eagle Library for anything. The experience was definitely that of one star or less, but I bumped it up one because they can’t control the weather. I just wish that Indianapolis would have some sort of rules in place that would dictate a closure during heat like that if the building cannot be made comfortable and safe somehow.

This particular location has a really nice & helpful staff.