New library in Stuttgart, Germany

E-readers such as Kindle or Nook may be hot holiday gifts this season, but that doesn’t mean libraries are a thing of the past. In fact, with architecturally significant buildings, exhibitions and a wide range of amenities, the public libraries in many cities rank alongside museums and other cultural attractions as must-see destinations for many travelers.

Here are five libraries worth a visit:

Stuttgart Central Library, Stuttgart, Germany
Officially dedicated at the end of November, the new central library in Stuttgart, Germany, has joined the Mercedes-Benz Museum as a major local attraction. Designed by Korean architect Eun Young Yi, the Stadtbibliothek is a nine-story, cubed, glass block structure that looks staid and grey during the day but glows iridescent blue at night. Inside, an open, all-white floor plan pushes the books to the perimeter, surrounding the children’s library and the multi-zoned reading, research and gathering spaces.

Don’t miss: To emphasize that this new facility is open to all, the word “Library” is written in English on the outer wall of one side of the building and written in German, Korean and Arabic on the other three.

Central Library, Seattle, Washington
When it opened in 2004, the New York Times’ Herbert Muschamp described the downtown Central Library in Seattle, Wash., as “a blazing chandelier to swing your dreams upon.”

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, the unusually-shaped steel and glass building with 30 miles of books arranged in an ingenious ‘Books Spiral’ has become one of the city’s most visited attractions. “More than 2 million people visit the Central Library year,” said Seattle Public Library spokesperson Andra Allison. “You can’t go anywhere in the building without seeing tourists with cameras.”

Don’t miss: Take a guided or self-guided tour, but don’t miss the view from the 10th floor.

British Library, London
With more than 150 million items, London’s British Library is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive. In addition to public tours and events, the library displays world treasures from a collection that includes the 1215 Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci’s notes on architecture and arithmetic, illuminated manuscripts and Shakespeare’s First Folio.

Don’t miss: Current exhibitions explore the role of supernatural phenomena in the work of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘lost’ novel.

Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark
Founded in 1648, Denmark’s Royal Library holds printed Danish works dating back to 1482. The original 1906 library building on Copenhagen’s harbor was expanded in 1999 with an angular, shiny black granite addition now referred to as the Black Diamond. Today, the library is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions and is home to the National Museum of Photography, a 600-seat concert hall with its own 10-member ensemble, a garden, a roof-top terrace and several exhibition spaces.

Don’t miss: Public tours of the old and new library buildings are offered each Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.

Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland
Dublin’s Trinity College Library is Ireland’s largest. It’s also one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions, mostly because the library is home to the Book of Kells, a lavishly decorated, four-volume illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks in the 9th century. Two volumes are displayed to the public at a time: one is open to a significant, decorated page; another shows two pages of script.

Don’t miss: In addition to the Book of Kells and other related manuscripts, visitors may tour the library’s Long Room, which contains oak bookcases filled with 200,000 of the library’s oldest books, a collection of marble busts depicting writers, philosophers and men connected with the college and Ireland’s oldest harp, which dates to the 15th century.

Which special libraries have you visited in your travels? Add your suggestion below.

No. 5: Denver International Airport
Some travelers are still smarting from Christmas 2006, when a blizzard closed Denver International Airport for 22 hours, stranding more than 3,000 passengers. The airport’s snow-removal skills have vastly improved, but weather-related delays can still happen. Wait those out with free Wi-Fi or a self-guided tour of the art collection (brochures are available at any information booth).

Defeat the delay: If any planes are moving, watch them on the active taxiway that runs beneath the glass and steel pedestrian bridge linking the A gates to the main terminal. (That bridge also leads to security checkpoint lines reliably shorter than those in the main terminal.)

No. 6: John F. Kennedy International Airport

When winter weather hits, all of the always-busy New York-area airports — LaGuardia Airport, Newark Liberty International and John F. Kennedy International — quickly become zoos. At JFK, seven separate terminals mean delayed travelers must make do with services at hand. That’s not a problem in JetBlue’s amenity-rich T5, which offers free Wi-Fi throughout the terminal and more than 40 shops and restaurants, including Deep Blue Sushi — all after you go through security. Elsewhere, it’s a post-security challenge. Your best bet is Terminal 4, which has the most pre-security options, including public art by Alexander Calder and a retail hall with shops and restaurants, such as the Palm Bar and Grill.

Defeat the delay: When planes are grounded, the AirTrain from JFK to the New York City subways usually keeps running. The trip to the city might take an hour, but will cost less than $10 and can be its own adventure.

No. 7: George Bush Intercontinental Airport
At Houston’s Bush Intercontinental, delayed passengers can view space-related exhibits on loan from NASA and shop for their own space-themed souvenirs at a branch of NASA’s Space Trader store. There’s also a revolving steakhouse restaurant, CK’s, at the Houston Airport Marriott located in the center of the terminal complex, and an interterminal train below the terminals designed in 1981 by the Walt Disney Co.

Defeat the delay: It may be an airport, but you can still get a taste of Texas. Three Stelzig Ranch shops offer boots, hats and other Texas-style accessories, while Texas Trail Boss Jerky sells beef, pork, turkey and bison jerky.

No. 8: Las Vegas McCarran International Airport
In addition to free Wi-Fi and complimentary recharge work stations, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas offers delayed travelers entertainment in the form of the Howard Cannon Aviation Museum, art exhibits, an aviation-themed kid’s play area, an interactive Dance Heads video booth and bars serving oxygen cocktails.

Defeat the delay: McCarran also has approximately 1,200 slot machines. And, as the saying goes, you can’t win if you don’t play.

Part 3 tomorrow…

Television: TV in the Antenna Age is filled with television sets and related items from the first four decades of television

Models range from the earliest commercial sets with 7-inch screens in Art Deco wooden cabinets to colorful plastic versions from the 1970s designed to look like space helmets and flying saucers.

Here’s a preview:

Philco Predicta 4654 Pedestal - 1959

Hoffman M143U Easy Vision 1954

TVs from the early 1970s

Memorabilia from Howdy Doody, Romper Room and other TV shows

Television: TV in the Antenna Age is on view in Terminal 3, post-security in Boarding Area F through February 6, 2012.

(All photos courtesy of SFO Museum)

DFW introduced a program that links the Foursquare and Facebook Places location-based mobile applications to 85 (so far) of the airport’s concessions. Now if you check in when you’re at the airport you’ll see deals and discounts offered at food outlets and shops right around you.

For the next several weeks, you’ll notice “brand ambassadors” in the terminals telling people about the service, teaching them how to use it and handing out giveaways.

Back in April, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport introduced discount offers available via quick response (QR) codes printed signs around the airport.

The QR codes direct passengers to the airport’s mobile website — www.iflyatl.com — where there are downloadable discount coupons.

The TSA is also using QR codes. According to a recent post on the TSA Blog,  the agency is testing QR codes on checkpoint signage at a few airports to point travelers to information about lost and found, customer service, procedural information and travel tips.

Where I live, it’s called Ride the Ducks and, corny as is it when a bus/boat of quacking tourists drives by – which is fairly often now that summer season is in high gear – this does seem like a really fun and unusual way to check out a town.

In Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Branson, MO and the other U.S. cities where these amphibious adventures are offered, the tours start in town.

But for anyone who might find themselves stuck at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport there’s now a Dutch version of the ducks designed specifically for people like you.

Powered by 198 batteries, the carbon-neutral Floating Dutchman bus boat picks up its passengers right at Schiphol Plaza, drives into town and then drives into the water for a tour through the city’s canals. When the tour is over, the bus emerges from the water and drives back to the airport.

The time in the water is about 45 minutes, but the entire tour will take about 2 hours and 45 minutes. So if you’re thinking of doing this on a layover tour operators suggest you choose this as an option only if you’ve got at least four hours to spare.

Sound like fun? Here’s more information about Schiphol’s Floating Dutchman.

(Tip: Book online and you’ll get a 10% discount)

And if you don’t have quite enough time to take the tour, there’s plenty to keep you entertained at Schiphol.

The airport recently opened a lovely indoor/outdoor park and not too long ago, the airport opened a library.

That list included Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Mo., the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham, Ma., and the Plumbing Museum in Watertown, Ma.  The Cockroach Hall of Fame, in Plano, Tx. was also on that list. It’s where more than two dozen costumed and preserved award-winning cockroaches are on display, including the bejeweled, piano-playing Liberoachi.

Liberoachi plays on forever at the Cockroach Hall of Fame

Here are few more unusual museums from the story:

If this museum could talk, it would slur its words.

In Bardstown, Ky., the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History traces American whiskey history back to the 1700s with displays of liquor memorabilia ranging from moonshine stills and antique bottles to Abraham Lincoln’s liquor license and the hatchet used by temperance crusader Carrie Nation.

Vacuum or Lamp? Both!

They suck — and that’s why several dozen antique, vintage and just plain wacky suction-producing cleaning devices are displayed at the Vacuum Museum inside Stark’s Vacuums in Portland, Ore. Some of the most unusual models offered time-saving conveniences. Our favorites: vacuum cleaners that double as hair dryers, neck vibrators, lamps or footstools, for those quick clean-ups in the den.

Giant shoes: not just for clowns

Compact and coin-operated, the Giant Shoe Museum displays about 20 giant shoes dating from the 1890s to the 1950s. A feature of Old Seattle Paperworks in the Pike Place Market in Seattle, the oversized footwear includes The Colossus, a 5-foot-long black leather wingtip from the 1920s, and a shoe worn by Robert Wadlow, once the world’s tallest man.

Want to see more unusual museums? See the Museum Monday post here on StuckatTheAirport.com and check out the full story with 14 Bizarre Museums – on Bing Travel.

But if it’s the funny and offbeat you’re after, hightail it to the Plumbing Museum, the Pencil Sharpener Museum and these other offbeat and somewhat off-kilter places I profiled in a recent slide-show story titled Bizarre Museums for Bing Travel.

Here’s a sampling:

Established to celebrate “the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum,” the three galleries operated by the Museum of Bad Art in the Boston area celebrate paintings that have “gone horribly awry in either concept or execution.” Rescued from trash heaps, yard sales, thrift stores and attics, the collection now includes more than 600 works of art, all of them bad — but in a good way.

Whether it’s a good hair day or a bad one, Leila Cohoon is happy to weave stories about the history of hair and take visitors through Leila’s Hair Museum in Independence, Mo. The carefully coiffed collection includes locks snipped from the manes of celebrities, 400 framed Victorian hair wreaths and more than 2,000 pieces of antique brooches, bracelets, necklaces and other jewelry made entirely with, or containing, human hair.

Located, appropriately enough, in Watertown, Mass., the Plumbing Museum’s collection snakes back to the 18th century and includes antique sinks, toilets, water closets and bathtubs as well as historic tools of the trade. If you’re curious about water mains, overflows and septic tanks, this museum devoted to piping technology through the ages will help flush out the answers.

When he’s not out removing unwanted critters from private homes, pest-control expert Michael Bohdan is tending to his Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum in Plano, Texas. The museum features live insects, such as Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and more than two dozen costumed and preserved cockroaches, including the bejeweled, piano-playing Liberoachi and the sexy Marilyn Monroach.

Get the picture? There are 14 offbeat museums featured in the Bing Travel story, Bizarre Museums.
I’ll let you contemplate these a while and post a few more tomorrow.

Have I missed your favorite offbeat museum? Drop a note in the comment section below and perhaps your recommendation will be featured on a future edition of StuckatTheAirport.com’s Museum Monday.

Would you willingly spend your days stuck at the airport?

Dr. Damian O’Doherty did. For a year. I tracked him down for my “At the Airport” column on USATODAY.com. Here’s the story.

Dr. Damian O’Doherty has promised his wife that by June 30^th, he’ll stop hanging around Manchester Airport.

The facility, which bills itself as “The big friendly airport in the North of England,” has undergone $135 million in improvements since 2007 and offers free Wi-Fi, a children’s play area, a tour-able Concorde in an aviation park overlooking the runways, and a day lounge with a giant track for playing the popular Scalextric car racing game.

Those amenities are appealing, but it’s the more mundane aspects of the airport that attract O’Doherty.

The 43-year old professor teaches organization analysis at the University of Manchester and, armed with a research grant, he’s spent this past year embedded at Manchester airport. His goal: to study the everyday habits of airport workers and passengers and the impact of the airport environment on staff and travelers.

“I wanted to take the idea of an ethnographic study from the traditions of anthropology and deploy this as an experiment to study airport ‘natives’ and their culture,” says O’Doherty, who lives 30 minutes from the airport rides his bike there and back.

For inspiration O’Doherty says he looked to the Chicago School of sociological ethnography, pioneered in the 1920s and 1930s, “in which scholars would inhabit street corners, taxi-dance halls, gangs and ghettos in ways that would challenge our assumptions about the society we take for granted.”

O’Doherty says his wife, an anthropologist, was both supportive of his project “and relieved that I was not going off to Siberia or the New York underground system – both popular sites for contemporary ethnographic study.”

Still, O’Doherty’s year-long study did pose some dangers. Although he insists he hasn’t “gone native” – a common concern with those embarking on anthropological studies – his daughter’s first word was “airport” and he has extended his project year by a few months. And while he has returned to his post and his students at the university, O’Doherty is still spending two or three days a week at the airport.

Borders and boundaries

Via email and a long Skype conversation that took him away from reading a bedtime story to his young daughter, O’Doherty shared some of the details of his year at the airport.

“It is the questions of borders and border-crossing that really interests me,” said O’Doherty. “Airports occupy and define a whole series of borders. Not simply the borders of a nation state but also borders between the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. They are where land turns into sky, and man’s dream of flight finds realization.”
At ground level, O’Doherty said he wanted to see how an airport was constructed and managed, “who was pulling the strings behind the scenes, installing the security cameras,” and making the decisions. “I wanted the back stories,” said O’Doherty, “So I ended up working in an office with a team of construction project managers for whom the airport is a building site.”

Arriving with an academic background, O’Doherty knew little about construction or project management before starting his study of the airport. But because he was strictly observing the protocols of ethnographic research, he decided he had to acquire professional qualification as a project manager. So in addition to spending many evenings in the terminal building, “sometimes becoming confused whether it was day or night,” O’Doherty also spent time studying for the exams in project management, which he did pass.

O’Doherty found that the airport experience not only warped time but, at times, space. “As you get to travel behind the scenes, stepping out of the public concourse and into a ‘staff only’ area can be a little like that experience that Alice had when she stepped into her rabbit hole!” said O’Doherty. And while he agrees with that saying about an airport being the front door to a city, his observations have led him to consider an airport a city’s back door as well.

Life at the airport

During his year at the airport, O’Doherty made note of daily timetables, seasonal rhythms and patterns, and the wide variety of operational and maintenance procedures. He also observed the push and pull of passenger movements through the terminals, an experience he discovered is a closely studied and often highly managed sequence of routines.

O’Doherty spent time with the airport chaplains, who described themselves as “the conscience of the airport,” as they tried to aid distressed and emotional passengers. And he got to know Olly, a stray cat adopted, and now extremely pampered, by the airport administration. “It always struck me as slightly odd that when I would walk to the office of the senior management sitting outside would be a rather rotund, elderly, ginger cat,” said O’Doherty.

Now, as June 30^th approaches, O’Doherty is getting ready to leave the airport routine and begin the task of turning thousands of pages of notes into a book. So far, he says can’t really generalize about air travelers and their behavior, but that “passengers do share a strange paradoxical condition of imprisonment and liberation.”

For its part, the staff at the Manchester Airport is anxiously awaiting O’Doherty’s findings.

“He managed to be here through all sorts of experiences, such as the inaugural Emirates A380 flight last year and our battles with ash clouds and snow,” notes John Greenway of the Manchester Airports Group. “So he’s really seen all sides of the airport and the nature of working in the aviation industry.”

Not, apparently, at Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

According to the airport’s newsletter, there are always MREs (meals ready to eat) in storage in case there’s an emergency and people are stuck at the airport.

Happily, no recent emergencies warranted opening those packages, so as the expiration date on 1400 of the ration packages neared, the airport decided to donate the meals to the local food pantry.

MREs from Reno Airport on their way to the food pantry

Don’t worry: the airport has ordered a fresh batch of MREs to put back in storage in case there’s an emergency in the future.

If you’re stuck at Reno-Tahoe International Airport when it’s not an all-out emergency, there’s still plenty to do. In addition to slot machines, art exhibits, pubs, free local calls and free WiFi, passengers who show a same-day boarding pass can squeeze in some free skiing or snowboarding at nearby Squaw Valley USA.

It’s Souvenir Sunday at StuckatTheAirport.com. That’s the day we take a look at the fun, inexpensive and “of” the city souvenirs you can pick up when you’ve got time to spend at an airport.

This week’s finds were spotted in the shops at Delta Air Lines’ Terminal 3 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport – JFK.

And, while they’re not “of” New York City, these cute kitty-bunnies caught my eye.

If you find a great souvenir next time you’re Stuck at the Airport, please take a moment to snap a photo, jot down some notes (price, why you love it, etc.) and send it along.

If your souvenir is featured on Souvenir Sunday, I’ll send you a special travel souvenir.

Finished shopping? If you’re in Terminal 3 at JFK, be sure to visit the iPad village.