Here's some news concerning the Free Library's hours of operations for the upcoming Papal Visit and World Meeting of Families:

The entire Free Library of Philadelphia system will be closed on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27 for the Papal Visit.

Additionally, the Parkway Central Library, located at 1901 Vine Street, will close at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 24, and will remain closed through Monday, September 28. Parkway Central Library will reopen at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 29.

All other neighborhood libraries will keep regularly scheduled hours on the days that only Parkway Central is closed.

Leading up to and following this landmark event, don’t forget to visit Sacred Stories: The World’s Religious Traditions, a special exhibition of historic religious texts in Parkway Central’s Rare Book Department. 

As always, freelibrary.org. is open 24/7, offering access to author podcasts, ebooks, movies, music, and more!

Update about returning materials during the Library closures:

We will extend the due dates out four days for items due during the closures – so if an item was due on Saturday, 9/26 and the patron has not returned or renewed it before this week, its new due date will be Wednesday, 9/30.  Materials due Sunday, 9/27 will receive a new due date of Thursday, 10/1.  We will handle the items due Friday/Monday for Parkway Central using the same pattern.  The extensions for materials due on 9/25 and 9/28 will only apply to checkouts that were done at Central. If an item is due on Friday to a neighborhood branch, we won’t be changing its due date and it will still be due back that day. The system-wide changes will only apply for items due on the weekend.