Holiday closure

I have pondering my thoughts on the recent holiday closure of the local public library for Memorial Day. Not only is the library closed for Memorial Day, but it was closed on the Sunday before. I will be honest, I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it as a library patron. I had things I wanted to return, new things I wanted to check out, and other general library duties that one does while visiting a library. Being that the library was closed, it seemed to throw a monkey wrench into my rhythmic schedule of the weekend somehow, or at least it felt that way when I wanted to go. And it is not like my library visits are very long. I do a lot of searching on-line before I go, so I might spend a total of 20 minutes in the library itself. But the amount of time out of the library is filled with what I achieved in those 20 minutes in the library. So those 20 minutes I needed the library to be open, I now feel like I have hours of time to fill.

I was also a bit peeved because it was not until the late afternoon on Saturday when the website noted it would not be open on Sunday and Memorial Day. In fact, it was posted after the library closed on Saturday as far as I could tell. And I did not notice any signs posted at the library to notify the patrons of the change in Sunday hours. So this seemed to feed my emotional backlash of the library closure.

Then I thought how I longed for days off or shortened hours when I worked in an academic library. When the library was open till 1 am and then all the sudden because school was out and the library closed at 10 pm, it was a nice change. Or when a holiday did come about, it was nice to get the day off. But never do I remember getting the holiday off and a day before or after, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I really tried to tackle what the role of the library is in the community, and if taking off days (not just holidays) is beneficial to the role. I know that many would argue that a day of closure might mean that patrons that tend to “camp out” in the library will have to find a place to go when it is closed, but I would argue the library does not just cater to those types of patrons. There are also patrons like me who do 20 minute visits. I would suspect that the majority of library patrons fall into this category. I think this is the community that I refer to when talking about the role of the library. And somehow, I feel failed by my local library for the extraneous closure.

I guess I would just have expected the library to have communicated better to the community to which it serves so the closure was not such a surprise. Then maybe I would not feel failed by the service of library to me as a community member.