Recently, I’ve rediscovered the joy of going to a library. I’ve always loved visiting libraries.
When I was little, my mom would take my brother and I to the main library in Yerevan weekly, if not more. Then when I was in high school, I often did my homework in the beautiful UK library in Lexington. And in college I was in libraries heaven, often spending hours in Norlin Library, CU’s engineering library and physics libraries (yes, I’m a total geek), as well the futuristic Boulder Public Library (with it’s charming cafe, located literally over the creek).
And in Denver, the crown jewel of all libraries has got to be the Denver Public Library. First the building itself. The building, or rather the seemingly many conjoined buildings remind me of toy building blocks, playfully piled on top of each other. And having the structure right next to the Denver Art Museum, with it’s expanded modern wing makes it look even quirkier.
Today I finally spent a few hours inside, and invariably ended up checking out 4 books. I got “The Principled Politician: The Ralph Carr Story”, “Colorado’s Japanese Americans: From 1886 To The Present”, a biography of mayor Wellington Webb, and a manual of Japanese writing.
One of the most intriguing collections I discovered there was the Western History photo archive. Apparently the library has over 600,000 photographs relating to the history of Colorado and the American West. And about 10,000 of them have already been scanned and made available for printing and searching/previewing online.
