Not All Who Wander Are Lost, But It's a Smart Way to Bet in the Downtown Library

Seattlest thinks the Seattle Central Library is gorgeous. But in every conversation we've had about the building, someone always points out the elephant in the room: it's a bitch finding your way around.

One of our friends likes to tell the story of the frantic woman she saw approach a librarian, crying, to ask for help finding a book before her parking expired. She'd been there for fifteen minutes and hadn't even found the nonfiction book spiral yet.

Seattlest's experience hasn't been that emotionally scarring, but we have to admit it we find it easier to navigate on a particular floor than it is to move between floors. And we never plan on visiting the library when we're in a hurry.

Turns out our social circle isn't the only one to have noticed it -- we just don't know any wayfinders. According to the PI, navigational help is on the way:

Faulk is a professional "wayfinder" -- which is a fancy way of saying she makes signs. The Seattle Public Library hired her this year to help book borrowers and tourists -- especially tourists -- navigate the $170 million library, which may have included fluorescent, chartreuse escalators, but not many signs.

One of Faulk's installations stands in the Fourth Avenue lobby: a temporary sign, one of several she put in the library this summer, with arrows pointing to the elevator behind it and to the restrooms to the back and to the right.

"Questions (to the staff) like 'Where's the auditorium?' are way, way down," said Andrav Addison, library system spokeswoman.

But there are still areas in the library that can seem like a labyrinth, and the system is planning to put in more of Faulk's signs next year.