Hennepin County Library – East Lake Library

I miss the old library of my childhood that used to be here. There were these great individual booths, where you could curl up with a book and sit there for hours. The new library is much better looking, but you can tell it was designed to be pretty, not to host readers. There are tables, but no real reading spaces like there used to be.
The meeting room is also a little weird, as it looks like a giant glass cage.
I prefer the Franklin Library or Downtown library.

I used to go here somewhat regularly for baby or family story time because it was the only one in Minneapolis on Fridays, but I find it a bit too chaotic. I really like the libraries that have a separate room for kid’s activities, it contains the kids and helps keep calm. But E. Lake doesn’t have this, and the children’s area it not set up in a way that facilitates story time.
It also tends to get really crowded here, while for some reason many other libraries get almost no kids for story times. More and more families seem to arrive as the activity gets going, each new late family plopping on the floor behind another, not in a nice neat circle that generates a sense of order for the kids.
Ironically, I also like when the facilitator responds positively to little kids who do choose to get up and move around, but I get little sense at E. Lake what the kids are supposed to do.

We’ve used the meeting room at the Lake St. library on several occasions. It’s great to have a location so close to our office, and located in a neighborhood that often is forgotten.
I recently went again to look for a book, and to be honest, I haven’t had a library card for a really long time. With all the bookstores and on-​line resources, I just never got around to it after moving back here over a year ago. Looking for this book, I was reminded again why libraries are a treasure.
The book was printed many years ago, and I needed it right away for a meeting. I called several book stores to see if they had it in stock — nope they didn’t, but it would take them at least a week to get it for me. I went to the library and there it was.
The librarian was super helpful and let me sign up for a temporary card even though I live in the burbs and technically they wouldn’t do that. I checked out the book, used it at my meeting and encouraged all the participants to get their library cards so they wouldn’t have to buy the book.