America's Next Top Library

If I were setting Mantor Library up on a blind date, I would describe her as having a really nice personality. Which, as everyone knows, is blind-date-matchmaker speak for “is never going to be a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. ( A relief, actually, because – seriously - is there anything creepier than watching Tyra Banks demolish a season’s worth of emotionally fragile model wanna-bes? No. It’s like watching a python consume an entire herd of tall, skinny goats.) Anyway, back to the library. Architecturally speaking, Mantor is a little too…utilitarian… to be considered beautiful. More Soviet Bloc than I. M. Pei, if you catch my drift.


The subject of Mantor being somewhat aesthetically challenged came up while we were designing a new library brochure. We have so many great services to offer, it was difficult to whittle the text down to fit brochure format. But when it came to images, on the other hand…not so much. And while the brochure came out really good, it did get me to thinking about what it might be like to come to work every day in an environment that was movie-star gorgeous.

So today, I decided to take a virtual tour of libraries that rank considerably higher on the hotness scale than ours. And I found some real stunners. Like these.

And more, like the dark and brooding Trinity College,

or the light-filled and airy Seattle Public.

This is the Salt Lake City Public Library:

Is it me, or does it remind you of Hollywood Squares? I'll take Paul Lynd for the block. And circle gets the square at Phillips Exeter Academay Library, too:


while this daunting library at Yale is like a futuristic version of Connect Four.


So there they are: supermodels of the Library world.

But of them all, if I didn’t work here at Mantor, I’d choose this one:

Which, while not soaring or High Tech or cutting edge in any way, shape, or form, is really much more my speed. Let's just hope we can outrun Tyra.

Thanks for playing.

Bookjones.