New York Public Library – Inwood Library

What does one rate when one rates a library? They transfer books, have dvds… what more do you want?
The staff is rough around the edges, not rude, just rough around the edges. Go forth and read a book, reviews are not literature.

I just got my library card at this library and the people there were very nice. The catalogue of books was fine for a small library. My only complaint was the bathroom smelled awful.

This is a great library. The selection at this branch is always great. Whenever I stop by I can find a great new book. Their hours are convenient and the staff is very friendly.

It’s the library.
Nice staff.
The usual, I mainly just go to drop stuff off and to pick up holds that i get sent to this branch.

It can be noisy with children sometimes. Fortunately, the children’s area is upstairs, away from the grown ups. Also, it’s clean and well-​lit inside.

used to live in the vicinity, & this library’s like around 4 blocks away from my apartment then. it took me sometime to visit this one, though i’d always pass by it to and fro my work. also, it didn’t look appealing to me. it looks like an extension of the elementary school, or the high school that i know somewhere is located. it looks like there are always schoolchildren spending their time inside this library, including their nannies/​mannies. but when my internet connection got bad, i decided i can use their free wifi connection. it was worth it.

I stopped in because I had just finished a book off my summer reading stack and wanted something new. Little did I know what I had hoped would be a quick side trip to my local library would turn into a time consuming, frustrating ordeal.
First, a note about the library itself. The selection here is kind all over the place covering an eclectic mix of topics and languages, but that’s at largely a reflection of the community it serves.
On this fine afternoon I scanned the fiction looking for anything interesting and ended up choosing two books. I took my selections and stood in line. Checking out took forever. I must have waited 25 minutes, and there were only 4 people in front of me.
When I finally get to the front the clerk a young man, tells me I have fines on my account. This was news to me because the last time I had taken out a book I have made a point of paying off all my late fees and I knew I didn’t have any books out. He said the computer was telling him I had fine, but it wasn’t from this library and he didn’t know which one. He asked me if I had any idea library it might be. I have patronized several city libraries over the years so I had no to tell. The young clerk directed me to an older woman at the other end of the desk.
I walk over and I ask her if she can give me details, what, where, when, etc. Cue the «I don’t know anything, I just work here» responses. I am generally very polite to anyone dealing in anyway with customer service, but this woman drove me nuts.
Me «Can you tell me what library the fines came from?»
Her «I don’t know, the system doesn’t tell me that.»
Me «Can you tell me when the fines were incurred? Even just a year or a range of year like before 1990 or something?»
Her «I don’t know, the system doesn’t show me that.»
Repeat ad naseum. She did mix it up a few times by telling me there the had been changes and a new system, but this new system apparently is designed to not actually tell her anything, except that I have a $ 20 fine that came from nowhere with no date for nothing.
Awesome.
The woman types some more stuff into the recalcitrant system, and eventually coaxes the system that doesn’t tell her anything to tell her things. She checks a list of codes for the various libraries (There is a list where a librarian can look up what code corresponds to what library! Isn’t that handy?) Now I know the where and why. I kicked myself as soon as the question came out of my mouth, but I dared to ask, «what book?». Guess what her answer was.
While the librarian wrestled with the NYPL’s equivalent of HAL 9000 (I’m sorry, Ms. Librarian, I can’t do that) I noticed a sign that said that the NYPL was in the process of combining various sets of records into an über-​system. I realized that what had most likely happened is that the records from various branches, including older records, had been combined into one big database accessible to all the branches. But I’m guessing this integration was imperfect and/​or incomplete.
If she had said «We have a new system now and older records from other libraries are appearing in it, but the records are incomplete» instead of «I don’t know, it doesn’t tell me that» we’d have both been a lot happier. What truly frustrated me was that «I don’t know» really meant «I could find out at least some of what you are asking, but I don’t feel like looking it up, so I’m going to keep saying I don’t know until you take the hint and leave.»
Now, for the upshot. The woman removed my fine, without my asking, I suspect because she wanted me to go away and stop asking her questions. So why am I complaining?
It was her attitude. I was clearly inconveniencing her by asking her questions and forcing her to get NYPL 9000 to cough up the info. I’m truly sorry her system was poorly designed. I work in computers and so I sympathize when workers find technology to be a hindrance instead of a help. But good service isn’t about the technology, its about the people and how you treat them.

If and when I make a list of Places in New York That Cause Me To Fundamentally Question the Point of Continued Existence, this branch of NYPL will definitely be on it. The checkout folks/​pages are all surly teenagers as taciturn as the boy in Little Miss Sunshine (without the glimmer of ironic humor behind the eyes). For some reason, the whole place is always coated in a thin layer of grime, as if someone’s dirty laundry had been rubbed all over every surface. And, as always, fluorescent lighting makes everything worse.
They have a couple of neat-​sounding events here: live readings of Shakespeare plays on certain Saturdays, storytime for kids. I’ve never been to these things, so I can’t vouch for them. I can only say that the average experience for a library patron is pretty depressing.