Oh, my library...

Yes, as you've all noticed, my library has some Issues. About that children's/YA policy, here's the official line:

"Adults unaccompanied by a child who do not require immediate materials from the Children's area shall be asked to relocate to other areas of the library."

There are signs up that have it worded a little differently - I forget exactly how, but they're where I got the "Looking for a specific book is okay but browsing is not" idea. And they're posted in the YA area as well, so I assume that's included. I assume the basic idea is to protect children from predators. They've never challenged me - it probably helps that I'm female and young-looking - but I'm always ready with an "I was looking for xyz book" answer just in case.

And yes, I do know this library is "backwards" (as a commenter put it) in many ways. As someone who trained as a librarian (though I don't currently work in a library), it drives me completely crazy. Making it worse: I am in the second-largest city in the state. Not that tiny towns don't need good libraries too, of course, but for some reason I expect this sort of thing less in cities. But here, actually, I've lived in two nearby much-smaller towns that had great libraries - and were part of a system, so it was actually easier to get specific materials than in this plays-well-with-no-one city library - and the city's is much much worse. Sigh.

I did just get an email that they're holding Saving Francesca for me again finally, so I'll go retrieve that over the weekend. Still working on Imaginary Girls - the writing is good but I really dislike pretty much all of the characters so far so I'm having a hard time.