Seattle Public Library

The new downtown Seattle Public Library received a lot of media attention when it opened up, so after spending an hour in Pike's Market I thought I would see what all the fuss was about. The outside looks pretty cool...

...and there are some interesting vantage points inside...

But overall I wasn't impressed. The library didn't seem to have that many books. Maybe this is because the central library serves as a distribution center for branch libraries throughout the city, or maybe it is because so much is online now. There was a wide open room with about 200 computer screens in a row, each being watched by a glass-eyed "researcher" not paying attention to anything but the monitor and certainly NOT surfing for free porn. For a moment I felt like I was back in Civil Procedure. Also, the color scheme was a little weird:

welcome to my bordello

The Red Floor didn't seem to have a purpose except perhaps to host a few conference rooms, and once you got into the stacks neon yellow/puke green escalators took you from floor to floor but then you had to take an elevator or stairs to get back down. Speaking of floors, even though the library just opened, one of the floors was closed since the floor surface had to be refinished. I guess that in all the weirdness the builders forgot to protect it from foot traffic scuffs.

I was most disappointed in the 1/3 of a shelf of Portuguese books in the foreign language section. I have more on my bookshelf.