By Joe Deaux
At 9 o’clock at the Brooklyn Public Library on Grand Army Plaza a man is looking at a website for the video game “Mafia.” A woman is checking her AT&T phone bill. Several people are watching videos on YouTube. A woman is composing an email next to a man who is studying a language on Rosetta Stone next to another man who is searching the library’s online card catalogue.
Dave, a library employee who helps with computer troubleshooting, says 20 people on average will be waiting to use a computer – 40 on a busy day, like this past Saturday. Dave and his colleagues call the Monday after Thanksgiving “Cyber Monday.” “Black Friday” may be a day when stores are jammed with shoppers. But on “Cyber Monday” everyone comes to the library to do their online shopping. The only time of year that compares in terms of congestion are the weeks leading up to April 15th.
At the moment only two people wait for a computer, but Dave says that around noon the lines will be long.
Things will only get worse when school lets out.
“It’s pretty wild,” he says.
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