Thursday, June 27, 2013

#9 Hastings Branch


2674 East Hastings Street

The final Vancouver branch! So far north and east of everything else. However, since it was a really nice day when I went to visit this one I was able to go to some thrift stores at the top of Commercial Drive, and then walk the rest of the way to the library. I also visited a nearby trading card shop that had the biggest selection of old Magic: The Gathering packs I've seen in town.

They also had a huge amount of terrible old '90s trading cards based on super heroes and stuff. Of course they didn't have any of the cards I was looking for (old fantasy art trading cards for my friend), or they had them in sets, but not packs, which are way more fun.

However! Nearby (ish, at Renfrew and 1st) there was another card shop that I have no idea how it stays in business as they mostly seemed to stock old comics nobody wants and old trading cards. However, in addition to old hockey cards and Gen13 cards, they also had various fantasy art trading cards! Hurray! When the guy working there took the boxes down from up on the shelf they were on, they were _covered_ in dust. I don't think anyone's even looked at those in at least a decade.

Okay, so what does this have to do with a library? Well, nothing really (though I did look up how to get to that second shop in the library), but I don't have that much to say about this branch. I mean, it was nice, and I would gladly go here more frequently if it was anywhere near anything I ever went to. I walked in and just really liked the atmosphere, but am completely unable to tell you why. 

Which leads to what might be the reason as to why I've barely written about library services on this blog: reviewing libraries seems like homework. I mean, I'm not doing any courses right now, but I am in library school and writing about the various services offered in different branches sounds like an (unexciting) assignment I might have to do someday.

In other news...

I discovered recently that the Central Branch of the VPL has gotten rid of all of their reference desks, and replaced them with roving librarians. That seems so weird to me, and more or less means that I'm not really going to ask them for help. I mean, you can txt them or use the phone they've set up for that, but, uh, I'm unlikely to do either of those things. I generally only end up talking to librarians when I want a book that's missing anyway (ie. passively telling them it's been stolen). Still, I'm interested to see how this will work for the VPL.


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