OUTSIDE of college campuses and romantic comedies, the library is not usually a place to pick up a date. But that didn’t stop several dozen singles, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from showing up on a recent Tuesday night at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library for its first speed-dating session.
Among them was Jeremiah Lee, a 33-year-old software engineer who said he had not stepped foot in a public library in years. “The kind of person the library can attract is different than the kind you get at a bar,” said Mr. Lee, who wore a dark purple fleece and blue jeans for the occasion. Participants were asked to bring a favorite book, so he clutched a copy of “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Road” by
Cormac McCarthy.
In a basement meeting room a boombox played love songs while daters were assigned numbers and had four minutes to chat, flirt or wrinkle their noses at one another’s literary tastes. Then the men rotated, book in tow, to the next woman. Later, librarians would tally scorecards and connect any two people who indicated mutual interest.
Can “Atlas Shrugged” find love with the “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”? Is attraction possible between a
Jonathan Franzen reader and a die-hard
Elizabeth Gilbert fan?
Those are the types of questions librarians are starting to field. In a kind of hearts-and-flowers literacy drive, public libraries across the country are sponsoring speed-date nights to draw more young professionals into reading rooms.
In Fort Collins, Colo., librarians strung white lights and scattered rose petals for two date nights last fall. The main library in Sacramento recently hosted its second event. Libraries in Chattanooga, Tenn., Piscataway, N.J., and Omaha all held soirees for
Valentine’s Day last month.
“The library wants to be a gathering place that is relevant to younger people,” said Donya Drummond, the reference librarian who promoted the San Francisco event, mostly through
Facebook. “We had more people than we knew what to do with.”
Literary speed dating seems to have its roots in Europe. Danny Theuwis, a librarian from Leuven, Belgium, believes he and his colleagues introduced the concept in 2005 with the goal to enliven somber libraries, and make them “more alive, more direct, more emotional,” he said in an e-mail. He trained hundreds of librarians across Europe to host literary speed dating, or “bibdating” in Flemish.
Among the first of similar events in the United States took place at the Omaha Public Library Benson Branch, where Amy Mather, a librarian, and her colleague at the time, Manya Shorr, organized a “Hardbound to Heartbound” night in 2009, on Valentine’s Day. Some 65 people showed up.
Library Journal, a trade publication, named the two women “Library Leaders Creating the 2.0 Library of the Future” for their efforts to attract “a generation that came of age in the Age of the Internet.”
“The age range from 20 to 40 is a population that we do tend to lose unless they have young kids to bring them into the library,” said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association. “They’re paying taxes and voting. We need to be viable to them and provide them with experiences and resources that are useful.”
Last spring the Collaborative Summer Library Program, a national consortium of public libraries, included literary speed dating on its list of suggested adult library programming. Since then, libraries across the country have been dimming the lights and playing matchmaker.
“It’s a safe space,” said Diane Moore, a librarian at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. “There is no alcohol, so you don’t have to worry about people saying ‘Oh, baby’ one night, and then the next morning waking up and going, ‘Yikes!’ ”
One logistical snag is the preponderance of women. Libraries reported difficulties attracting men in sufficient numbers. In downtown Fort Collins, an event had to be canceled when no men signed up. At the San Francisco event, the sign-up ratio was about one man to every five women. (The one exception seemed to be the same-sex night, when more than twice as many gay men turned up as lesbians.)
“We can’t figure out how to get enough men,” Ms. Moore said. Chattanooga’s downtown branch is planning to host date nights quarterly, and is soliciting ideas for how to draw more men. Some have suggested putting photographs of attractive young women on their leaflets. Others proposed playing down fiction, since men seemed to bring in more nonfiction books.
That was not the case at the San Francisco Public Library, where women and men showed an eclectic range. Not surprisingly, the book you brought advertised something about your compatibility.
One man brought a science fiction book he wrote himself. Another participant, Tiffany Bukowski, a 24-year-old marketer, brought a collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski, the infamous womanizer, with whom she shares a surname.
“One guy brought in Kafka,” said Ms. Bukowski, who wore a quick smile and low-cut sleeveless dress. “I’m like, ‘What are you trying to say about yourself with that?’ ”
Still, she seemed to hit it off with the Kafka guy. The witty exchange prompted her to include the man on her list of those she would like to see again. It wasn’t clear if he felt the same.
As for Mr. Lee, the software engineer, he went to dinner and karaoke with a woman he met at the library, though things fizzled after one date. He was undeterred and said he would come again.
“The books were almost irrelevant,” Mr. Lee said. “But if your four minutes is feeling like a long time, you have your book to fall back on. It’s a great prop.”
Posts
