Brooklyn Branch Library
Spring 2014, Cornell University
Choose Your Own Adventure books, most popular in the 1980s and 1990s, are children’s gamebooks in which each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome. As a reader of these books, one knew that choosing the next step in the story really only gave you so much control – each path had its own sense of adventure and surprises around every corner. As the Choose Your Own Adventure books question the linear convention of the story, this Brooklyn Branch Library questions the typical circulation and movement through a public building.
People have many different intentions and needs in this day and age when visiting the library. These range from meeting up to do group projects, using the internet to apply for jobs, attending children’s story time, or just wanting a place to hang out. This library provides spaces suitable for and specific to each of these desires/needs. How patrons choose to move to/through these spaces will allow them to “choose their own adventure” without prescribing their experience in the library.
