It takes about four minutes of brisk walking from when you get off the metro, walk up an exceedingly long escalator if people aren’t blocking the path to the left, walk across the station to a bank of precariously curved stairs, leave the metro/RER station, cross rue Neuve Tolbiac, walk past the MK2 Bibliothèque cinéma and wish you were going to the movies rather than to work, brace yourself for the wind tunnel that is inevitable given the architecture of the library—four buildings facing one another like open books, standing tall and catching the sunlight. All the books live upstairs while us researchers, having braved the open-book wind tunnel, are confined to the basement. You walk down the vertigo-inspiring rolling sidewalk, walk past the smokers unless you are one of them, and enter the BN through a revolving door.
Once inside, you open your bags and wait in line—sometimes there is no wait, sometimes there is a long wait—to go through the metal detectors and have your bag passed across a long table where a guard wearing gloves gives your bag a cursory check. You cross the broad hallway to the vesitiaire, where you get in another line—sometimes there is no wait, sometimes there is a long wait—and if you haven’t closed it by automatic impulse, you’ve left your bag open, because you are waiting at the vestiaire to remove your jacket, empty your bag of your wallet, phone, computer, and any other resources and valuables you might want to put into the plastic shoulder bag that one of the vestiaire employees has slid across the counter to you once you reach the front of the line. They give you the short end of a claim ticket with a number on it. Your jacket, bag and its remaining contents have hopefully been put in the same cubby hole, accompanied by the long end of the claim ticket. Plastic shoulder bag in tow, you get your BN researcher card from your wallet or pocket.
By now you’ve noticed a soft and curious recurring sound that evokes the call of a long-beaked, prehistoric bird. As you cross to the library entrance, the sound grows louder, and after you use your card to pass through the first set of turnstyles you yourself make the sound by pushing open a first bank of giant silver doors. The suction of this puffy black stuff in between the big silver doors makes the bird noise. You cross a foyer and pull open an identitcal set of giant silver doors and make the noise again. And then you are inside.
The first time inside, you weren’t quite sure where to go at this point, but it becomes clear after a panicked moment of glances around that you should follow the more experienced researchers first down one short escalator, then down the longest escalator yet. These escalators are only wide enough for one person, so there is no passing, and more people in their descent stand on one stair – they seem in no rush. Resigned and calm, you too make the long slow descent. Once at the bottom of the stairs, you glance around again and see that there is another set of turnstyles that one can only pass using the researcher card, and another double bank of push then pull giant silver doors. You enter.
And you notice immediately how silent it is. The white noise, apparently, is insulated by the black puffy stuff between the giant silver doors. So you feel somewhat calmer and maybe more sure, and you walk to the map of rooms—you have, if you know what to do, reserved a place in one of the rooms in advance. The hallways to the left and in front of you stretch out and up. The carpet is red in all directions and it looks like there has been water seepage, but the dark red parts are something else because once you’ve come here a few times you might notice that the marks are always in the same place, and are never any more faded than they were the last time you were here. So you walk for maybe 15 seconds, or maybe 3 minutes, depending on which room you are in, to the room where your research materials and desk are reserved.
And you show your card to a librarian, who lays your researcher card down on a sensor that has a concave space shaped just like the card itself. This makes you think of how you initially thought you were meant to swipe the Navigo pass to get on the metro, but the swipe didn’t work and you observed others in action, you realized that you are supposed to hold the Navigo pass over the designated purple blob to get through the metro turnstyle and to the quay. A similar logic is at work here with the BN researcher card and the little concave spot. Your card sits there until your transaction is finished on the computer.
The librarian goes into a back room and returns with your materials. They all must be scanned individually, each has its own slip that has your name and assigned seat printed on it. And then you go to your seat. And there you stay. God help you if you need to pee, or have a bite to eat, or you’re a smoker. There is no easy way to get out of the BNF—if you want to leave the building, the only way out is the way in, and the electronic pass check at the turnstyles won’t let you leave until you’ve checked in your research materials. God help you. God help us all, down here in the basement. And yet, once I’m here, I can focus. And somehow feel very calm, and very pleased to be here.
Note: It has been brought to my attention that you need to have a reservation in order to pass through the second set of doors. This makes this space just past the elevators some sort of BNF purgatory, I guess. But you can always make a reservation on the computer terminals in purgatory if need be.
