One of our primary missions at the library is to provide accurate, authoritative, timely, and useful information to anyone who inquires about almost anything. We treasure this part of our job and find hunting for facts almost as rewarding as actually discovering them. In the spirit of the hunt, I give you answers to questions about the library that I have never been asked. In a sense, these are useless numbers since no one has (as far as I know) needed them, but for anyone who has randomly wondered about this library, I present to you the following:
Number of tiles on the Happy World mural (pictured) in our lobby: 3,562
Number of steps on the main staircase: 48
Number of chairs in public areas of the building: 541 (Note: benches and couches count as only one chair and the often-rearranged chairs in the Community Room are not counted.)
Number of brick columns on the outside of the building: 19 (13 are on the Witherspoon Street side of the building plus one full column on the Hinds Plaza side and one on the Wiggins Street side. There are also two partial columns each on the Hinds Plaza and Wiggins Street sides of the building.)
Number of doors in publicly-accessible areas: 67
Number of steps it takes me to walk around the perimeter of the building: 232
Number of lightning rods on the roof: 56
Number of cubbies on 3rd floor: 36
Number of book shelves: 4,278 (Note: these are shelves in the public areas of the library and do not include shelves in staff areas such as Lending Services.)
Please note that all of these facts have only been verified by me (maybe not the most authoritative of sources) and any errors are all my own. If you have any fun facts about the library, please feel free to share them with us. We confess to being a bit nerdy about information.