Multnomah County Library – St. Johns

I am a nerd and I proudly admit it! I love books, music, and movies. That is one of the main reasons I have always loved libraries. However this one is superlative.
The library keeps great hours. They are open until at least an hour aftervI get off work. There are also late hours on Monday nights. This is awesome.
The staff is ultra friendly and helpful! I actually got a tour on my first visit!
The self check out is perfect. The people move through the process quickly and there has never been a wait due to a high number of stations.
The selection is limited due to the libraries size but the online sharing of county libraries minimizes inconvenience. If you can wait a few days, you will often get what you want.
Here is where being old fashioned touches my review. I wish there was more emphasis om CDs for music. Streaming just doesn’t work for me quite as well.
Overall, this library is a winner.

Excellent little branch of MCL

Libraries. I love them.
This is a smaller one but the best thing about libraries is that you can place something on hold and pick it up at your neighborhood library. I do this all the time for TV shows I can’t get since I don’t have cable. Or even movies I missed in the theatre and aren’t streaming on Netflix yet. Plus, I get an email when it’s almost time to return my books and DVD’s so I don’t ever have to worry about «oh no… when are my library books due??». I have a 2^nd grader. If anyone else has a kid this age, they know that part of their homework is to read 20 min a day. A kid will go through A LOT of books this way. The cool thing about this library is that there are sections for the kids where they are grouped by reading skill. So, I just go and pick up another stack of level 2 books for my kid’s homework and return them when he is done. It works. The staff is friendly and helpful. The computer check out system works like magic (I still don’t understand how the machine just knows what you’re checking out when you put your items on the tray thing). I’ve also noticed computers here so if you need access to internet, you can go here. Free Wi-​Fi is also available.
All in all, I’ve been extremely impressed with my little library. Thanks!

St. Johns library is tiny, yes. My current experiment without cable or internet has left me to pick through the scraps left in the DVD section. Sometimes I end up with really good picks — a Pixies documentary, Curb Your Enthusiam, a Kung Fu flick, etc. Other times, man… I don’t know. It feels like the DVD dollar bin at Walgreens. But really, should I be going to the library for movies? It’s all about the books baby, and this place brings it. Just pick a subject, any subject… how about welding? weight loss? maybe you’re in the mood for a biography on Condoleeza Rice? Okay so my point is that they have something for everyone, fear not.
I’m knocking it down one star because they have issues checking items back in after I’ve returned them. I have returned items and continued to see them on my account (overdue, meaning I was being charged a fee). When I went in to talk to them about this, they found 1 of those items on the shelf… for someone else to borrow (even though my account still showed it as checked out??) and they seemed to think the others were stolen from the return bin. Although they resolved this by removing the items from my account, I am a little hesitant about return items in the future without personally handing them to library staff.

Perfection.
To the last, I shall sing plaudits to Thee…

This is such a great, small library. Everything you could want in a beautiful space. While a bit quirky, the staff are nothing short of wonderful. But, c’mon! It’s St. Johns. If it’s not quirky, it’s not great!

i love that i can walk to a library — a lovely, restored old library, with access to a huge collection. what i don’t love — what i really, really, really loathe — is that this place ALWAYS SMELLS LIKE DIAPER.
i realize st. john’s is family friendly, and home to a diverse lot. i realize it’s a public place. i realize i’m kinda fussy. but ooooh pretty please fix that; i’m not the only one aware of this horrid phenomenon, and it totally kills the otherwise lovely community charm of our library.

One of the tinier branches of the Multnomah County Library, it’s also one of the nicest. This library serves a very diverse community and houses a lot of material for the Spanish-​speaking community. It also has about 12 computer stations for public access to the Internet. The staff here is helpful, too. Strangely, most people don’t know about this library in their own backyard.