Not your usual venue for a sin­gles’ night, but I do like this idea.

Any­one hop­ing to spot a poten­tial part­ner can pick up a pink badge sig­nalling their roman­tic inten­tions at recep­tion. Then they can stroll the aisles look­ing for a book, DVD, or some­thing — or some­one — else that takes their fancy.

“This is a dif­fer­ent type of sin­gles evening because it’s not being held in a bar, restau­rant or night­club. It’ll offer many peo­ple look­ing for a part­ner an envi­ron­ment they’ll be more com­fort­able with.”

How­ever I do hope that this idea was born with the inten­tion of bring­ing the pub­lic closer to their pub­licly funded libraries, and as a way to make ‘pub­lic space’ and ‘pub­lic libraries’ anal­o­gous (as opposed to someone’s ‘wacky’ idea!).

For an inter­est­ing video on this topic (libraries as pub­lic space), I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend watch­ing Joshua Prince-Ramus’ 2006 TED Talk on design­ing the Seat­tle Cen­tral Library.