In the past, as I’ve traveled, I’ve found it pretty easy to find a library when I need one. I have offline maps from OpenAndroMaps that I use with OruxMaps. I open it to my search area and ask it where the libraries are and it gives me a few. Suddenly this is failing. Perhaps it was already failing and I wasn’t finding as many as are there.

The first failure was in Etna, California. OSM directed me to a parking lot with no library around it. Luckily, I had signal that worked and could find an address 1.5 blocks away. This mark got moved when I got home.

The second failure was in Ely, Nevada. This is the county seat. There is no way they don’t have a library. My map said no. Again, I had some signal and was able to find an address. It’s a big building next to the courthouse, well lit and full of books and has excellent internet. Now that I’ve located it on OSM, I found it was marked as a post office. There’s one post office in Ely and it’s off on the east edge of town. USPS doesn’t know about this one. It’s all better now. The White Pine County Library lives!

The third failure was in Hawthorne, Nevada. This was a lesser failure. When I was lazy and just searched for something with the word “library”, I got nothing. But when wandered through the menus to search the type, I got it. It just needed to be named. Now it is the Mineral County Library.

Before, I had suspected that someone had gone through and systematically added libraries. Maybe they have and just haven’t gotten to Nevada and northern California. In Utah, I was even able to find out about the tiny library in Bluff, housed in the old jail! It’s so small it was only open 2 days a week for a few hours. At that time, it was one of the only libraries that left the internet on while closed. (I’m glad a lot more do this now. Is there a tag for that?)

Anyway, libraries, very important mapping and there’s some still in need!