Welcome from David Dodd, City Librarian
On behalf of the staff of the San Rafael Public Library, welcome to our website!
My name is David Dodd, and I have been the City Librarian for San Rafael since November 2004. I am fortunate to work with so many people here at the Library who are public-service oriented and who possess many skills to help navigate the world of information, knowledge, and wisdom (as well as entertainment!) which the Library strives to collect and make accessible.
If you are visiting for the first time, please take the opportunity to browse through our pages, which offer a multitude of possibilities for the virtual library patron. With your library card, you have access to a wide array of electronic resources: you can download audio books, check out electronic books, and utilize our magazine and newspaper databases, as well as many other reference databases. If you're looking for something good to read, you might want to try NoveList, a database that can recommend reading based on what you've enjoyed reading before.
Our MARINet catalog links us to all the other public libraries throughout Marin County. You can place reserves on materials you would like to check out from the Library, and you can manage your own patron record.
I hope you will also visit us in real life--we have two locations. The first is next to City Hall in downtown San Rafael, in a historic Carnegie library building, which offers wireless Internet access and public-access Internet computers (you can reserve a computer online). Built in 1908, but ready for the 21st century! Our building has recently received some much-needed work, as we replaced 91 windows, and updated our heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system. If you visit us on a hot day, you'll now be treated to an air-conditioned environment--we call it our "Air-Conditioned Internet Hot-Spot."
I hope you will also visit the recently-reopened Pickleweed Library, located in the newly-renovated Pickleweed Community Center. The Pickleweed Library features materials in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and boasts a computer lab with 16 Internet-enabled workstations.
Again, welcome!
--David Dodd