Central Library Audio Tour: Flatbush

Episode Transcript

You are listening to the Brooklyn Public Library audio tour of the Central Library. I am Norman Erickson and I have been a librarian here at the Central Building for over 30 years. I have led tours of the buildings for patrons and staff for many, many years. Now we are bringing you a bit of that tour in a self-guided audio format. This section of the tour includes a portion of Central Library that runs along Flatbush Avenue. Feel free to walk around as you listen.

In 1941, this was the first space that was opened, and this was where all the adult nonfiction materials were kept. This was originally what would be called the Main Reading Room. It had Art and Architecture, History, Travel and Religion, the Biographies, Social Science, Science and Industry, and Languages and Literature. They were in this area. They go from the front of the room all the way to the back. There were two staircases that were located in the middle of the floor. They were for the library and to go downstairs to the decks to get the materials. Those staircases were moved in 1955 during the renovations.

The front part of the room is what we now call New & Noteworthy. This is an area that was created as part of our 2020 renovations, and it is a changing space. It houses a different subject every couple of months. It also is where this year, 2022, we launched the Brooklyn Vinyl Collection. For many years we did have a circulating record collection of vinyl. We got rid of that in the mid 1990s when the changeover to CD became more popular. Now, we brought back vinyl and it's very, very popular. When you have a chance, come over to the listening station, you can play one of our LPs.

The New & Noteworthy space, like I said, originally had the Nonfiction areas. Then in 1997, we created what we called the multilingual center, which was a department that was focused on speakers of languages other than English. It housed all the language materials there. The staff of that department spoke some of the larger popular languages in Brooklyn: Russian, Chinese, Spanish. And we did programing in many languages for many different people in the community.

Languages, Literature and Fiction. That's the formal name of this department, or we just call it Language & Literature. You'll find your fiction books in here, but you'll also find all the books you need to write a literary criticism. You want to read some poetry? You want to look at some plays? That's all in this department here. Also, we have the audio book collection, the DVD collection is in here, there's 40 languages in the back end of the room, as well as a language learning set for not only English, but many other languages. And the holds, that's the book you had me bring up in the basement a while ago. So, when you place a book on hold, when you get our notice, come on in here. It's in LL, come pick it up.

Now if we continue through LL, you'll go through a doorway, a glass door, and you're into a little vestibule, and then you go into a new space. We now call this the Civic Commons. Until very recently, this was a staff work area and this whole space was off limits to the public. As part of the 2021 renovations, we created the Civic Commons space. And the Civic Commons itself houses our Computer Lab, IDNYC, the Passport Office and a Community Partners Space. The Community Partner Spaces, any one of the Brooklyn organizations, any one of our offices from Borough Hall, they may come here and use the spaces and our security staff. Their office is back here now.

So as we exit the Civic Commons, we're going to walk back through Language & Literature. We're going to walk through the Grand Lobby, Circulation Hall, and we're going to go through another archway into what we call the Youth Wing.

This is the end of the third stop on BPL's Central Audio Tour. The next stop on our tour is the Eastern Parkway side of the building. Walk back through the lobby and across to the Youth Wing. Near the bathrooms, you'll find a small blue plaque with a QR code that you can scan when you're ready to listen to the next installment. Or, you can navigate to our web page to find the next stop.

This tour was narrated by Norman Eriksen, and conceived by Norman Eriksen and LaCresha Neal. It was produced by Virginia Marshall, LaCresha Neal, Jennifer Proffitt, and Laurie Elvove, with help from Natiba Guy-Clement, Brynna Ververs, Caroline Hartman, and Mary Dickson.