Library Weddings

The Boston Globe reports today on the trend to hold weddings in the Boston Public Library (BPL). Joseph P. Kahn (one of my favorites of the Globe regulars) notes that the trend is on at the New York Public Library as well. The BPL has not advertised at all, but simple word of mouth has increased the number of weddings from 24 last fiscal year to 54 this fiscal year (2011).

BPL tries not to let the weddings interfere with the core mission of serving the public with library services. There are a few patrons who are becoming suspicious of weeding projects and plans to physically reorganize departments, assuming that it is all in service of wedding catering.

The photos at the Globe are lovely, and if you have ever visited the main branch of the BPL, you will understand why people are willing to pay fees that can total into five figures for a wedding venue so lovely and unique. It also helps the very needy bottom line of a Boston institution, and speaks (ahem) volumes about the interests and values of the bride and groom. The budget of the Boston Public Library, like so many other libraries, has been slashed, and they have laid off 90 staff, according to Mr. Kahn. The wedding catering brought in $825,000 gross last year (fiscal year 2010), but netted only $220,000 after considering the extra costs for security, cleaning, events office, and utilities. Perhaps this year, they will have a higher net to gross ratio. We can hope!

A Moveable Feast

I enjoy reading the Library Babel Fish blog, which is written by Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, and appears regularly on Inside Higher Ed. The most recent post, "Finals: An All-Consuming Ritual," hit home for me. Fister describes the "binging and purging" that are as much a part of exam preparation at her school as cramming and last-minute writing of papers. So much food is consumed in her library during finals that "the amounts of food-related trash that [the] custodians ... haul out ... [is] prodigious."

Our final exams began last week, and will conclude the end of this coming week. As I reported in a prior post, the library is extremely crowded with students, most of whom are bringing in not only cups of coffee, but large grocery bags filled with all manner of sustenance, some of it extremely smelly. Garlic-laced salad dressing is particularly pungent and the odor permeates all five floors of the library with remarkable speed. We have had to invest in industrial size and strength garbage containers--all with lids--in order to contain the mess and the smell, and we have requested that our long-suffering maintenance staff empty all the containers at least three times a day during finals. Thanks to the large garbage containers and the attention of the maintenance staff, we are keeping the situation under control as we count down the days until exams are over. I never thought I'd become an expert on garbage cans!