Co-working space, classic

The reading room inside Calgary’s new Central Library.

I’ve been spending lots of time lately in libraries. Specifically, the grand new Riddell Library and Learning Centre at Mount Royal University. I don’t know what the WiFi password is there, though I’m sure they would give it to me if I asked. Instead, I go there to escape WiFi and write in a lively place with lots of study space, and spectacular natural light. There are clean washrooms and a coffee shop with great coffee on the main floor. It occurred to me recently that the library is providing everything that a commercial co-working space offers, for the cost of a tiny fraction of my tax dollars.

I’m in a city that has decided to double down on investment in public libraries. This weekend was also the opening celebration for Calgary’s new Central Library. Literally thousands of people have been streaming in and out all weekend, some of them bringing picnics. The bookshelves in this new library are lit like art. And the building anchors a community in the city’s core that for the past few decades has struggled to revive itself, in the midst of shuttered shops and vacant lots. The new library is one of a few cornerstones of public investment in the area, and the community is now growing with condo developments, restaurants, and riverside park spaces.

Libraries are universal. I loved this article in the New York Times about writers’ memories of their childhood libraries. My favourite is the reminiscence by Neil Gaiman of being dropped off by his working parents to spend summer days in the local library, reading his way through the stacks alphabetically. My memory is of the little Southwood branch of the Calgary Public Library, and its seemingly inexhaustible store of books, and the library that was the geographical core of my elementary school. It had two full-time librarians in a suburban school with about 300 kids.

With those memories in mind, I’m off to donate to the Riddell Library and the Calgary Public Library Foundation.