David's blog: Library

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

If you've visited my books page or if you're a long-time reader of my blog, you know I'm a fan of Dayton's library. I'm still a fan but this summer construction on St. Clair Street downtown has made trips to the library a real aggravation!

Construction started in the spring, initially just a small area of St. Clair near Second Street, but now, almost August, instead of cleaning up their mess as they progress down the street, the construction crews have managed to block off all of St. Clair between Second and Third Streets as well as starting a mess on the next block.

Why is this a problem? The library's main entrance, which used to be on Third Street, was relocated to St. Clair a few years ago because there's a whole lot more parking on St. Clair. Or at least there was. Now they've managed to block all parking in the block in front of the library's main entrance as well as access to the library's drive through window and handicap parking spaces. Now to be fair, sometimes they do have a single lane open on St. Clair, so the drive through and handicap spaces are sometimes available, but not so you could count on them!

Another reason this construction mess is a problem is that St. Clair, one of Dayton's infamous one-way streets, is a major thoroughfare through downtown for people traveling south on Riverside Drive heading for Patterson Boulevard and points south. Patterson Boulevard passing the library and Fifth Third Field is one way north, meaning everyone coming south is directed onto Monument Avenue and then onto St. Clair. Which now, more often than not, is closed at the library.

Brilliant planning. No end in sight. Ugh.

(click pics to enlarge)

There's parking on Third Street near the front entrance if you're lucky, but then you have to walk across the construction

I don't know if this is new or slated to be replaced

It makes for an interesting photo at least

Capitol Tunneling of Columbus seems to be one of the culprits

No parking and no passage!

Thursday, October 28th, 2004

Dayton Metro Library doesn’t have a big gay section, at least not in the sense of a section of shelving where one can go and physically browse through gay books, but through the miracle of technology it has something almost as good. Go to the online catalog, click advanced, enter “gay fiction” as the subject keywords, and you get a nice list of all the gay novels or short story collections Dayton Metro Library has in all its locations. Sort by publication date to see what’s new. Click on “Request first available copy” and they’ll send it to whichever branch you specify. Sometimes it takes a while since, although Dayton Metro Library does have a fairly wide range of gay titles, it usually has only one copy of each. That can make for a pleasant surprise, though, when a few weeks later you get a by-then unexpected e-mail to tell you a book you’d been wanting to read is ready for pick-up.

Why this little advertisement for the library? Because this week I’ve been feeling a bit down for various reasons, but I got one of those unexpected e-mails. I have plenty of stuff to read for school, including Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Nietsche, Becher, Zwerenz, Bilke, Havemann, Bierrmann, Ulbricht (notice a German pattern here?), Joyce (one class is all Joyce), Dürrenmatt, Frayne, Rulfo, Borges, Cortazar, Garcia Marquez, Vidal (Virginia, not Gore), and Coloane (notice a Latin American pattern here? These are in translation though).

I was bad, though, and set all these other authors aside for a few hours Tuesday and Wednesday nights for Timothy James Beck’s newest (okay, published last year, but new to me) book, He's the One. You can read what I thought about it on my books page. It’s just the thing for a brief escape from the real world.