Back to work at the Mississauga Central Library

Yesterday I returned to work at the Mississauga Central Library, after spending the past two years and nine months at South Common. The Central Library will finally be open to the public on Tuesday, December 19 at 1:00 p.m. This week from December 11 to 15 I am acquainting myself with the new library layout, its departments (yesterday my team had a tour of local history and the digitization facilities) and today as well as later on this week I will be learning about MakerSpaces and the fun world of iPhones and the gaming lounge. (The library will have iPhones for its staff to use and I might be the only person who will need lessons on how to operate one of those things. You can start by teaching me how to turn it on.) Near the end of my first day I back I roved from floor to floor, taking photos. I first reported on the renovated Central Library back in August. Compare the photos from four months ago with how the library looks now. On this photo tour I started from the lower level and moved up:

The Maker Studio

Green screen space

The MakerSpace floor

Check-out stations on the ground floor

The snaky shelving in Children’s no longer wrapped in plastic and the shelves now filled

Children’s shelves filled with new books

Fiction on the second floor

Benches amidst the stacks, facing Lightfall

The gaming lounge

I will be stationed here on the third floor customer service desk

Nonfiction stacks. Unlike many of my colleagues I have no problem with the low height of these stacks. Unfortunately however the height of each shelf is too low, so many books, including entire series of multi-volume encyclopedias, had to be shelved on their sides with their spines facing upward, which created a most unappealing look down the stacks.

The library will be separating some of its collection to the stacks against the walls. The career collection and sheet music collection will remain separated, as they were before the renovation, yet the new library has decided to separate its entire Dewey 400 range (languages) to the wall stacks.

Noticeable improvement in the Ted Sharp Staff Lounge. The tiny Barbie tables have been removed and replaced with ones with a slightly larger circumference.

Furniture now on the red carpet of the Sky Lounge

Christmas tree at Celebration Square; the southern edge of the City Hall skating rink at the left

Fourth floor

No change made to correct this fault which I noticed back in August. Library users will unfortunately have to get on their knees to plug in their laptops under these desktops which line an entire wall–and risk banging their heads on the way back up. I did just that as I acted out trying to plug in an imaginary laptop. It is a deep trip to the outlet from the desk edge.

Fourth floor panel by the elevator

The view from my desk, taken this morning, from the Information Services workroom. I am sitting in the office first occupied, in the summer of 1991, by former Central Library Director Diane Dineen. I am facing the YMCA, looking west along Burnhamthorpe.