Hello. As a longtime regular user of the Menlo Park library, I can’t complain about a dearth of material. The library and the associated Peninsula Library System are actively engaged in their mission.
But there’s another side to the Menlo Park library that consistently leads me to wonder if they have to contend with any oversight whatsoever.
The electrical outlets in the floor beneath selected tables are old and mechanically spent, and some of them literally cannot serve the purpose of accepting and holding in place a plug. They are useless! I have written about this using the library’s website port, and have gotten silence in return.
The stall door in the men’s room hangs wide open when not in use, such that it blocks entry, and has been this way for years. The liquid soap has to be tried to be believed.
The wifi has dead spots, whole areas of the main floor where your device connects at a snail’s pace if at all.
There is no copier, in a public library. There is a scanner that, I’m told, does the same thing. I’ve never used a scanner, but no copier?
As a reporter for The Almanac, I remember covering events in rooms downstairs, including the city’s heritage society (I think it was called) with Frank Helfrich running things. It made perfect sense that these things always happened downstairs, given that libraries are sanctuaries for quiet study.
That idea is dead, long long dead, in the Menlo Park library. The downstairs is now used by library employees exclusively; events that used to be held there are now held upstairs, interruptions to library traditions be damned. The original intentions of excavating a basement and setting up meeting rooms? Tossed aside, and who’s going to say anything about it now?
I am, for one. I suspect I am not alone.
If the day comes when my home here in Menlo Park becomes no longer affordable, one bit of happiness I will take away with me is never again having to experience the imperialist vibe and literal impunity that permeate this library. I’m not talking about the employees. It’s the management that concerns me.
Thus my recommendation for a slogan …
“Menlo Park Public Library: Complain all you want. We’re not listening”
Dave Boyce
Allied Arts neighborhood
