Saturday Morning at DeKalb: A Photo Series

Ira Glass in an episode of This American Life compares library spaces to JK Rowling’s Room of Requirement. In Harry Potter, the Room of Requirement is a space that will be anything you need it to be, you just need to think it. If you spend some time at the DeKalb branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on a Saturday morning, you will understand what Ira Glass means.

At 10 a.m. on a Saturday, the library opens its wood-framed glass doors and transforms into the many spaces imagined up in the minds of the people who stream in. For some, it is a quiet place to read the morning newspaper, or to open the pages of a new novel. For others, the speedy wifi transforms the space into a video game, research or web-browsing hub. New Yorkers come for computer lessons, town hall meetings, story time, or even to vote in participatory budgeting. And some simply come to sit in a space that is safe, social and serene.

Now more than ever libraries are under threat due to budget cuts, lack of resources and the simple misunderstanding of the relevance of libraries today. This photo series sets out to show how this space ­– by adapting and transforming as its community does – is timeless and boundless.