Findlay Hancock County Library...The Rest of the Tour.

 


    This artistic sundial graces the street in front of the library.  As you can see on the side of the library I have been calling it by the wrong name in the previous blog.  The full name is Findlay-Hancock County Public Library.
     This interesting version of a sundial does more than just tell you what time it is.  Oh it does that but I think there was some way to determine what season of the year it was but I didn't take the time to figure it all out. I just enjoyed looking at it.  
      In the previous blog we came in the back door at the lower level. today we will visit the library from the front door to the right of where the above photo was taken.

Here is another view of the front of the building. Notice the glass area by the main entrance.  Let's see it from the inside

Greeting you inside the door is the always interesting statue of two children sharing a book on a bench.  Several libraries have this lovely piece of artwork depicting the same theme. What is interesting to me is I have never seen two of them that were exact duplicates. I think I will have to start looking for a manufacturers mark.
    All that aside this statue does a great job of giving the visitor a gentle and warm welcome to the library.

Here we see the inside of the entrance. The statue above is behind me in this picture. The glass provides lots of natural lighting and gives an open spacious feel. Sarah is leading my wife down the stairs to the lower level. The steps behind my wife lead to the upper level where the main library is housed.

    Here is a portion of the main reading room. The large collection of books is just to the left in this picture. The main entrance is in the upper right of the photo.  Here again we see the use of natural lighting with the long skylight above the study tables.  The entire library impressed me as one that was built to be a user friendly, working library built in an attractive manner.  I have seen too many libraries where form over powered function. Beautiful architecture, but not user friendly.  Findlay-Hancock was refreshing because here form was built around function, and done so attractively.

This view of the large main reading and stacks area shows an opening on the right side of the picture that leads through the genealogy department, into the electronic media (video's etc) and on to the children's area.  The numerous offerings in this library use the space well, and still maintain a feeling of openness.

As we leave the main reading room we pass by the information desk where a couple of savvy ladies work at the reference desk. They can quickly answer any question ...except maybe, what is wrong with your brother-in-law!
     Sarah stopped just to the right of this desk to give me my library card souvenir.  My wife also bought a nice library bag here as well.

    Sarah is giving me a souvenir library card for my collection. Just behind her is the genealogy room.  I spent parts of 3 days here researching my family roots.








Just below is a portion of the room set aside for video's etc.  I was somewhat surprised that so much room had been used for this department but was told it is a very popular  and growing part of the library. (And I thought libraries just loaned out books!)

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I saw several simple but effective decorations, especially this Caterpillar in the children's book area. 

Below is a room for children to do graphics. Another very nice idea that provides additional resources for children. This was also housed in it's own room.  After the flood there were several re-assigned uses for space in the library with the result that the space they had was more efficiently used and provided even greater services.  Talk about people who know how to make lemons into lemonade! The Findlay-Hancock staff can do that. 

I have not shown you everything I saw during the tour.
 We skipped the computer rooms, the magazine reading room, the little tucked away corners where a cozy corner invites a reader to sit and read.  I skipped the meeting rooms, now in the lower level, the administrative offices wing, and the vending machine break area where you can sit with your coffee or eat some lunch while you read.  By now I think you have a pretty good idea that this is a well designed and well run place to do some serious research or just browse some books for relaxation. Or you might want to select from the many other services they offer.
   My favorite room was the genealogy area pictured to the right above. Look closely and you will see these three double sided rows contain a large collection. There are more along the wall to the left with modern microfilm readers along the wall to the right.
Speaking of microfilm, I used to get seasick after about 30 minutes of watching pictures fly by on the screen in front of me.  They still work a little like that except now they are computerized. You see the microfilm on a computer monitor. When you select what you want you can download it directly to your thumb drive and then take it home to process, study or print.  A very welcome advancement in Micro-film.
    Finally I will leave you with this, another example of form fitting into function. The wall in the genealogy room was fine as it was. But to add some fun, and artistic decor they added the scene below to the wall in the genealogy room.

     I hope you have enjoyed this tour of the Findlay-Hancock County Public Library.  Please check back next week for another library I have enjoyed in my travels.  I think I will be looking into presidential libraries, Starting with the Clinton in Little Rock, AR, where they do indeed sell cigars in the gift shop!
    Thanks for reading. Comments always welcome!