![]() ![]() ![]() The hip-hop beats and power tool noise are coming from an 8,300-square-foot teenage learning facility called Cloud901 (the numerals are the Memphis area code). You can check out books and movies, to be sure, but also sewing machines, bicycle repair kits and laptop computers. naturalization ceremonies, job fairs, financial literacy seminars, jazz concerts, cooking classes, film screenings and many other events-more than 7,000 at last count. Here at the Central branch in Memphis, ukulele flash mobs materialize and seniors dance the fox trot in upstairs rooms. Libraries are no longer hushed repositories of books. It’s difficult to summarize the myriad changes taking place in American public libraries, but one thing is certain. Walking through its automatic doors on a weekday afternoon, I hear unexpected sounds, muffled but unmistakable, almost shocking in a library context: the deep, quaking bass beats of Memphis hip-hop, plus a faint whine of power tools cutting through metal. Hooks Central Library, a building of pale concrete and greenish glass, rises four stories in midtown Memphis.
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