How a library stacks up

The good news: The newly remodeled Cameron Village Regional Library is gorgeous. It's airy, smartly designed and flooded with natural light.

The better news: My secret time-killing spot -- the library's magazine area, which I frequently visit to do, uh, "research" -- now occupies some prime, second-story real estate, complete with a view.

The take-it-with-a-resigned-shrug-of-the-shoulders news: It's unlikely that there will ever be a huge, main public library in downtown Raleigh.

If a big, downtown library is important to you, the remodeled Cameron Village branch is as good as it's going to get. It may not be a temple of books along the lines of the New York Public Library, but it's substantial. The Cameron Village facility, which reopens Saturday, is by far the largest branch in the Wake County Library system. It has about 145,000 books and it attracts the lion's share of people who use the system's public computers. It's full of blond wood furniture, it has meeting space galore and there's a nifty glass-walled elevator in the lobby. (Great for getting to the second floor, not so great as a love venue.)

Despite its glories, the library is -- how do I say this politely? -- a reflection of popular tastes. As library supervisor Dale Cousins points out, patrons ask for children's books and audiobooks. They like mysteries and thrillers. So they get those things.

"What we've done is put libraries where the people are, and responded to what people say they want," Cousins says.

What patrons don't clamor for is a big downtown branch with a million volumes, a place designed for research. So they're not getting one.

I can't fault library officials them for that. It's just that the absence of a serious, research-oriented public library in the state's capital seems to say something. Maybe not something specifically about Raleigh, but something about the direction of our culture. The accumulation of knowledge -- the literal gathering in a public location of the things mankind has learned about itself and the world -- is an important undertaking. The Library of Congress has 130 million items: books, manuscripts, photos, recordings, maps, etc. But shouldn't every community have something like it?

Yeah -- unless a community doesn't much want it.

I know, I know. I'm just a half-step away from old-codger status. Next thing you know I'll be ranting about how the phrase "happy holidays" will destroy western civilization. Still, I felt better about things after talking with Cousins for a while.

We agreed that technology has changed many facets of life, among them the job of retrieving information. If fewer people need a library to look things up, it's because it often can be done via the Internet. That's why the remodeled Cameron Village branch has 128 computers and wireless Internet access. You still go the library to do research. You just use a computer instead of wandering the stacks.

Also, there's already a huge research library in Raleigh, at N.C. State University, just a mile or so from downtown. Ditto for Chapel Hill and Durham. It would be tough persuading taxpayers to pay for another facility that duplicates what's available within an easy drive -- especially when $4 million has just been spent on the Cameron Village branch.

Good thing it's gorgeous. The book buck stops there.