On Valentine’s Day, Show Some Love for the 42nd St. Library!

 

On Valentine’s Day, show some love for the 42nd Street Library.  Tell NYPL:  Return the books to the stacks and reopen the Rose Main Reading Room ASAP!
 
Join Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir outside the 42nd Street Library this Saturday at noon to ask, Why is it taking so long to reopen the Rose Main Reading Room?  When will the books be returned to the stacks?  When will the NYPL trustees make their decision-making transparent to the public?
 
Show your love for the Rose Reading Room by wearing red and bringing a rose for the Rose.
 
Saturday, Februrary 14
Noon – 1:00 PM
5th Avenue entrance to the 42nd Street Library (at 5th Avenue and 41st Street)
 
The Rose Reading Room has been closed since June 2014, when a piece of the decorative ceiling crashed to the floor. It has taken NYPL over eight months just to erect scaffolding to start the inspection process. In the meantime, readers are crowded into small, poorly lit and poorly ventilated rooms with ad hoc provision for computers.
 
In 2013, the New York Public Library Trustees hastily removed 3 million books from the stacks at 42nd Street to temporary storage in upstate New York.  The books were then moved again to remote storage in central New Jersey.  Many books that previously took minutes to obtain now take days.  Books may have been lost or damaged in the shuffle making them unavailable to readers who rely on the library.  Meanwhile, the historic seven-story tall book stacks in the 42nd St. building remain empty.
 
How long will the 42nd Street library continue with absent books and the Main Reading Room closed? Does NYPL care about its readers?
 
Come out on Valentines Day and tell NYPL:  New Yorkers care, we love our books and the Rose Main Reading Room!

Invite your friends to the facebook event.