The model for the Night Vale library (Patreon)

In the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, we have an adventure in the Night Vale library that, for the first time, describes that library's interior. When writing the rough draft of that chapter, I drew on what is still the archetypical library in my head, which is the library I grew up with. The Camarillo public library, about an hour outside of Los Angeles.

There is now a new Camarillo library, which is slick and beautiful and features a children's section with a pirate ship that you can climb on. But I grew up with the old library, a squat building with vertical blinds on all the windows, shelves radiating out from the center space, and, confusingly, a large part of the floor plan taken up by an indoor fountain area.

I'm now working on another piece of fiction that takes place in this library, and I've found that there are almost no images online of that old building. So I emailed the library staff and they were nice enough to dig up this slide of the fountain and the library.

And so, here it is, the model for the Night Vale library, mostly because it's what I think of when I think of the word "library". I should note that in my memory, since I was a small child at the time, the stairs down to the fountain were like the Chand Baori stepwell in India. As you can see, it was less impressive in reality:

Still pretty cool though.

-Joseph Fink