A Tribute to the Amsterdam Public Library

Last week, while I was visiting my parents on the East Coast, I spent a few hours browsing through the 20 pounds or so of Time, Transworld Snowboarding, and Travel and Leisure magazines that my mom conscientiously saved for me while I've been living in Europe for the past 9 months. Catching up on my US-centric news made me feel as though I had just arrived in the future via a time machine. When did Al Gore get the Nobel Prize? Who were the Jena 6? And Dog the Bounty Hunter had to apologize for using the N word? How come none of my so-called friends have kept me up-to-date with this important piece of information?

Also: buried on page 78 of Time's special issue on the Best Inventions of the Year was a blurb titled "Reinvented: The Hand Dryer". It stated simply that "[b]y forcing unheated air through a narrow gap at more than 400 mph, the energy-efficient Dyson Airblade dries hands in just 10 sec. flat". Well, finally, a piece of news that I actually knew about before the readers in America did. These are the hand dryers that can be found in the basement restroom of the main branch of the Amsterdam Public Library.

I've already been raving like a lunatic about these hand dryers to all of my friends in Amsterdam. First of all, instead of rubbing your hands under the airstream to dry them, you stick both your hands into something that resembles a toaster oven. Then, there's the noise, like the sound of a jet engine revving up for take-off. In the meantime, the skin on your hands is being subjected to g-forces from the heavy duty vacuum-cleaner-like suction, which -- thanks to Time magazine -- I now know is what it would feel like if you stuck your hands out of a car window while someone was driving the car at 400 miles per hour.

When I described this to my friend Jim, he was appalled. "I'd never do it. Don't you ever watch horror movies? What if I pulled my hands out and instead of hands, all I had left were bloody stumps?!"

It's true that I had my reservations when I first tried it. But now I'm a fan. Ordinary hand dryers seem so pathetic now next to the public library Dyson Airblades¹.

In fact, ordinary libraries seem pathetic next to the Main Branch of the Amsterdam public library, which I also rave about. I'm not alone in this (although I seem to be somewhat alone with the hand dryer obsession, so far). This branch opened on 7/7/07, and I'm guessing that it is the nicest library in the world. Although I haven't been to the one in Dubai, and who knows? -- maybe that one has a monorail that takes you through the stacks.

The library was designed by the Dutch architect Jo Coenen, not to be confused with my photographer friend Jo² who took this gorgeous photo of it that Flickr won't let me download except in thumbnail size (click on the thumbnail to be linked to a larger photo).

There are 7 floors (or 10, if you also count floors 0, 0.5, and -1; yeah, it's a European thing). On the first floor, as soon as you walk in, there's a bank of television screens. Most of the times I have been there, the screens are displaying a video of swimming dolphins. This seems to be totally unrelated to the reading of books, although dolphins are supposed to be pretty intelligent. I just read in Time magazine that they have recently been observed using sea sponges to catch fish. So maybe the point is that we can strive to be intelligent like the dolphins if we read a lot of books.

All the librarians have nicely designed uniforms. I read in the newspaper that these were controversial amongst the librarians when first introduced; I quite like them though. At least they are not ugly, and it makes it easier to identify the librarian when I have a question and he is trying to sneak off to the restroom to use the hand dryer.

There are escalators and a futuristic elevator and lots of ultra-modern chairs that look uncomfortably like plastic, but are actually soft and fun. On the top floor, there's a La Place restaurant, which serves cafeteria-style gourmet food (or gourmet-style cafeteria food, take your pick) and offers tables on the terrace, with a fabulous view overlooking central Amsterdam and the Ij river. They have 600 computers for free internet usage, a concert hall that seats 270, and "pods" for individual private study. They also have a gi-normous selection of CDs, DVDs, and computer games, which one may rent for one euro per week. Books are free and may be borrowed for 3 weeks at a time, although this is all on top of the yearly membership fee of 23.50 euro.

Hey, you gotta pay for those hand-dryers somehow.

Note: I plan to supplement this post with photos eventually, though my camera has been a serious disappointment to me lately, and I have no plans to go to the library in the next few weeks. Now that the nights are cold and dark, I am definitely less motivated to make excursions outside of my neighborhood.
¹Although with a name like "Dyson Airblades", it's easy to make the mental jump to "bloody stumps". Someone in Marketing really should have thought of that.
²I think Jo's photos are brilliant. If you want to see more, click here and prepare to be AMAZED. I also have a permanent link to her Flickr photo site on my blog sidebar.