Mission Branch Library

The Mission branch of the San Francisco Public Library is very small, and the selection of books is quite narrow here. The magazine selection, however, is quite expansive.
In the late afternoon a table is reserved for teens studying after school. However, you’ll notice that the table is always empty. Don’t be that guy who annoys the librarians and sits there anyway. You’ll have to squeeze next to the homeless guy with a cough at the next table.
I wish that this library was open later into the evening, but then again not many are.
Parking is tough to find (street only). Ultimately, I would rather study at a Starbucks than here.

come hre sometimes beautful building love this place to get wifi and outlets and work done

Open late, plenty of desk space and outlets, and a friendly staff — just what you want in a neighborhood library!

I love our libraries, and have used them almost weekly for the past 30 years — the Marina Branch, the Richmond Branch and the New Main are my favorites. I moved to the Mission 5 years ago, and I am lucky enough to have found a home less than a block from the beautiful Mission Branch. Everyone is great there — the Children’s Room is excellent, the large reading room upstairs is welcoming and well-​equipped (perhaps just a little too small for the heavy use it gets, especially in the evening), holds are handled promptly and efficiently. My only quibble is the clunky new website. I have depended on the website for many years as an easy way to find practically any book. Recently, the library appears to have been sold a real boondoggle — the new website supposedly offers «social interaction» for STAFF (!) and «greater search capabilities». Unfortunately, these things come at the sacrifice of speed and efficiency. Now it takes a full 30 seconds for the site to load (after I sign in), and this is with the very fastest Comcast service available in our neighborhood (145 Mbps). And less information is given, even after I am signed in — the «holds» section no longer identifies whether a book is LinkPlus or not, which means waiting in line and checking with an actual person for every reserve (instead of just looking for it on the shelf). Unfortunately, the Mission Branch is a bit understaffed, so this can mean 5 or more minutes, just to find that a book is actually NOT a LinkPlus book, but is still sitting on a cart rather than on the Hold shelves. One wonders why they did not spend this extra money on more staff, or more staff hours, instead of a less useful website. After all, we live in the very HEART of digital innovation. There is really no excuse for a poor website — except maybe that they just don’t care about the public. The new site is probably easier for the staff to maintain, or perhaps it was farmed out to the BilbioCommons folks (the website is now
instead of the old
). Whatever the reason, it is a step backwards for an otherwise innovative, dynamic and essential city resource.

Neighborhood public library. Often use it for studying for exams:) Librarians are nice and very helpful. The only thing bothers me here is that some people don’t care about others (make noise, talk loud, shake the table…)

I keep getting more and more jazzed with the Mission Branch library. The selection is always on point: oftentimes I find myself wandering around the CD area and finding music I’ve been searching for for years, or stumbling upon a great movie I’ve been meaning to watch, or grabbing books that will likely go unread (but hey, at least I’m still making the effort!).
Conveniently located right by Bart and surrounded by great dining and shopping options, the Mission Branch is the place to be. My one reservation with this branch is the amount of characters that are always on the computers or hanging about outside, gawking at me as I walk around in my workout clothes. It’s not the library’s fault, it just takes away from the good vibes if you ask me.

Legit place to plug in and get work done without all the bullshit designer coffee, hipsters, and a $ 2 per hour surcharge for using a coffee bar the way it was meant to be used. I guess in San Francisco we’ve replaced struggling, brooding writers desperate for a quiet space to craft their art with clean-​cut techies looking to hole up and absorb the culture of a city it without adding anything to it (unless you count «tech» as art but how many people do you know who are building an app for the greater good and NOT to sell it). But I digress…
The Mission library is pretty bare in terms of books available for rent, but you can request a book from any of the other city libraries and pick it up here. Convenient!
The wifi is free and fast. Wireless printing is available for 10 cents a page. Plenty of outlets. Beautiful architecture. And its quiet! Lot’s of Mission flavor in the form of the homeless or mentally unstable looking for a safe place to get out off the street for a few hours. Never felt threatened and the Library staff is always on it if situations get crazy.

My favorite branch
At the ripe old age of 98
The oldest SFPL?
A sturdy trunk of knowledge
ADA-​compliant

Staff is nice, library is nice–
but too many bums :(gets loud (and smelly in the adult area) it’s a nice small library if you just want to grab a book and leave.
Great kids area, and the library holds children activities that are great.

This branch of the SF Public Library system is awesome. I know old fashioned paper books are not cool, especially when the neighborhood is ridden with startup folks. But here’s the thing, sometimes nothing really beats a good, paperback book. The heft, the pages, and even the plastic cover. I love it. And the staff is super, super helpful and awesome. It took two mins to get a library card. Ps. They also rent tons of movies and tv shows too.

This Library in the Mission District kills me every time I roll in here. Someone or Somebody always causes a fuss over some stupid shit especially over a 15-​minutes express computer and of course the librarians gets the wrong end of a stick and they get verbally abused get need to put them in check. And I thought it’s the Main Library in the Civic Center when someone flies off the handle, I guess I was dead wrong it happens here too. Oh well welcome to San Francisco Accord.

In the Mission District? Looking for a quiet spot to read a book, magazine or newspaper? Have time to read and take notes, finish homework assignments or make last minute revisions to your research paper/​report and essay? SFPL Mission Branch is your answer! It is just within a walking distance from the 24^th St/​Mission BART Station!
Oh yeah!
Free Wi-​Fi at all San Francisco Public Library Branches!

Yet another great SFPL.
I was surprised. Located in the Mission, I expected it to be more grungier, packed with bums. Instead, I was greeted by a clean, singular large room with a few outlet-​equipped long tables and decent people seated around them. I wonder if gentrification caused a renovation, or if this SFPL branch was always great. It’s nearly on par with the Inner Richmond library.
It’s a bit small, and so most of the tables were full, but I have no qualms otherwise.

First off, I must admit that I walked by this building a dozen times not knowing what it was. After paying attention to my surroundings, it has become my house of worship.
I have a routine when I go in. Greet the staff at the front desk, walk up to new books, check out audio books then flip through some magazines. I even grab a few picture books (en espanol) every now and then. I love this tiny one stop place of literary heaven! (so much that I might be spotted here 2x’s in 1 week)

I make weekly pilgrimages here to drop off books and pick up new ones. They have DVDs and CDs, too. The staff is friendly (although they didn’t have any Spanish-​language suggestions), and everything’s FREE! This branch is open ’til 9 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I can get here after work.
My only complaint is that it’s tiny, and now that I’ve seen the sheet music in the main branch I can’t help but wish we had a music section in the MIssion.

ZOMG, I LOVE THE LIBRARY!!!
Whoops, calming down. The Mission branch is great. There’s a small DVD selection downstairs where you can just grab one on the way home (you might want to take a look at the DVD to make sure it’s not too scratched). A nice spacious reading room upstairs with a whole lot of people staring into computer screens, «reading.» Sigh. A good selection of books for the space, with nicely delineated sections. Someone needs to explain to me why the entire science fiction section is crappy mass market paperbacks. There are only so many Dune novels a person needs to read (one).
But the awesome thing about the SF Public Library system is interlibrary loan. You go online, request your book/​CD/​DVD, and they deliver it to any branch you want. Free! It’s like magic.
Note: I do not work for the library. I work in publishing, so I am just as broke as you are. When you use the library, you are definitely supporting publishers (thanks!). But please also buy some books. Preferably at your local independent bookstore. Please.

My Netflix membership is on hold or vacation or whatever because 1) I was tired of paying for my DVDs to hang out at my place for weeks at a time without watching them and 2) I wanted to try getting my movie fixes for free through the library.
The Mission branch has a really decent in-​house selection of DVDs. Everyone who comes here knows about it because there’s at least 3 – 5 people browsing the selection when I’m there. There’s about three shelves worth of DVDs on the first floor for movies and TV shows, and another selection on the 2^nd floor for documentaries, instructional videos and the like. There is a sizable VHS collection too.
So far it seems I’m trying to watch every Hong Kong flick in the building. This weekend alone I saw two Andy Lau movies — Love On A Diet and Dance Of A Dream. I’m on a foreign film run at the moment, so I’ve checked out French, Chinese and Israeli films as of late. I’ve barely cracked the sizable Spanish selection.
But it’s great to find films I would’ve probably never thought to search on Netflix right in my neighborhood. For free! Woo!

You get five stars because you’re a library and you are a block away from my house, and I don’t have to worry about returning my books to you because you are so close and I can drop them off on my way home from the bart and
TADA
I am happy.
Plus the people that work at you are nice.
Thank you Mission Library.

I read another review of this branch complaining about the hours and I laughed; a loud, derisive HA! of a laugh sort of exploded from my diaphragm, involuntarily I swear. Bad hours? This is one of the only branches that’s open every day! If you work anywhere near bart, you can take a train at lunch, pick up your books, grab some food in the Mission and pop back to the office in under an hour — that’s what I used to do before I moved a glorious two blocks away from this precious branch. Because it’s half a block from 24^th Street bart, I can drop off books on the way to work, and pick up the new ones on the way home, thus allowing my gentleman-​friend and I to continue our tradition of weekend tandem reading. Ah, love.
If you do have serious complaints about the hours, each branch has a limited amount of hours to distribute throughout the week, and they set them every couple of years or so through some kind of vote. Everything you need to know is on
.
My new complaint is with the Link+ system, which sometimes brings you the rare book that the SFPL doesn’t carry, sometimes claims to have multiple copies of a book or DVD but claims none of them is available for interlibrary loan, or sometimes will just arbitrarily drop your request without even bothering to invent a polite excuse. Right now I have my fingers crossed about (yet) a (nother) book about the War on Terror, and I really don’t want to have to ding the library a star if this book gets «lost in transit» or whatever they claim happens to it.
Regardless. They’ve got self-​check-​out machines, which I adore, because sometimes I check out books no one needs to know I want to read; privacy usually is their only perk, as even with a short line the librarians are quicker book checkers than me. They’re all very helpful and polite, and the glorious silence in the big upstairs room is all you could ask for when teen and adult material are combined.
You know, if anyone wants to complain about the paucity of hours or the abundance of people who smell unbathed, I am happy to introduce you to my old friend the Park Branch. They’re closed Sundays and Mondays, and the homeless people in upper Haight are literate, too, meaning they don’t just hang out in the library; they enjoy a full day in the library.
What gentrification means to the Mission Branch is that we keep the nice building and its history, but we can use it like a book walk-​through, nearly as anonymous as an online transaction. Why spend a single second longer there if you’ve got internet at home, anyway?
All my reviews lately are turning into anti-​classist tirades. Possibly because I lost my credit card on Christmas eve, possibly because I’m a gentrifier and sometimes feel a little funny about it, possibly because I may cease to exist once I run out of social injustices against which to tirade. Hey, now we’ve gotten our last paychecks and seen our total gross vs. take-​home pay totals, let’s all make big end-​of-​the-​year donations to the library. Think of the tax write-​offs!
PS: If the libertarians take over, they will privatize your libraries and you will no longer have the freedom to read whatever you want for free. Vote against government-​entity privatization!

I think I’ll always rate a library at least three stars. Just for existing they earn an automatic three yellow/​orange stars.
I’ve grown up with them. When I was young, my mom would take us to the library regularly. My brother, sister and I would scurry to each one of OUR aisles and get lost for half the day. Books are apparently a great baby-​sitting technique… at least they were –for us.
Sometimes I’ve struggled with the older, more complex models, but I’ve always found something work ‘checking out’ at every library I’ve ever entered. I especially love the kind of ones, where they don’t mind you sitting slightly sprawled out (just enough to be slightly annoying) in the quieter aisles, while you read about how to empower yourself, and how to better appreciate the ‘art of language’. Unfortunately, you can’t really sprawl out at this location, but you can learn how to empower and appreciate. And that is the beautiful essence of a library — they’re useful by their very nature.
This library is a really great local and community resource. There’s free Internet if you’re willing to wait (sometimes a painful one) and are OK mis-​spelling every frantic E-​mail typed in a crucial 15 minute span (I haven’t been back for awhile, so this could have changed since), good browsing magazines, a decent video and CD selection, and of course an impressive variety of great literature.
The librarians at this location are also easy-​going, helpful and patient.
ALWAYS worth stopping by… ESPECIALLY if you have the time.