When people talk about quality of life in Rochester, they routinely mention the parks and the Finger Lakes, the professional sports teams and Geva Theatre, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the clubs, and all the museums and colleges - and so they should. But there are also essential places that slip beneath the radar. A library, for instance - particularly the Central Library downtown. It's the kind of place that doesn't promote itself very much, even though the members of what Library Director Patricia Uttaro calls the public-service staff routinely go out of their way to be helpful to everybody who asks. Competence and consistency aren't very flashy.

At the heart of the matter are a single patron and a single librarian searching together to satisfy a desire or meet a need. Art, Music, and Recreation Division Head Carol Tuzzeo says that, no matter how tough times become, "librarians will continue to help people make connections between the need and the right resource. This is what we do."

Assistant Director Sally Snow adds that librarians and library staff members have to talk to people to find out what they want, and need to know at least something about almost everything. "A woman came in one day to ask about a windmill. She meant a sundial. You have to listen to people and ask the right questions to get to the real question," she says. Yet librarians do their good work without much fanfare or talent for promotion. They're librarians, not rock stars.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Rochester Public Library. The library is marking the occasion with a variety of events and initiatives throughout the year; for a list of upcoming activities visit the website at rpl100.org. In honor of the centennial, and especially in the face of continued financial struggles for the library system as a whole (view this news piece for more info), it's important to take stock of the library, its many services, and its role in society.

The Central Library's treasures may not immediately dazzle, although there are always surprises lurking somewhere in such a large collection - more than 1 million items in total. Last year the local-history department discovered that it had the will of city founder and namesake Nathaniel Rochester, as well as a partial collection of Susan B. Anthony's letters. The science division came upon a catalogue from 1916, 14 volumes of what Uttaro calls "sliver-thin pieces of North American woods." She now has the staff on the lookout for valuable editions to set aside for preservation.

In a more practical vein, the Central Library's art, music, and recreation division houses a picture file of more than 1 million copyright-free images, as well as Do-Re-Mi, a database of more than 40,000 popular songs. Many of the people who use the picture file are teachers and students, but also artists and designers generally dissatisfied with the quality of online images. Tuzzeo says, "It's very browsable. You can pull out several subjects at a time. There's always a chance to discover something by accident. Libraries are filled with serendipity."

The Central Library is also a patent and trademark depository, one of only 84 in the country. "The resources that we have here," says Kate Meddaugh of the history and science division, "are the same that an inventor would find at the U.S. Patent Office." That's especially important, she says, in a city that ranks among the top five of patents per capita. "As corporations like Xerox, Kodak, and Bausch & Lomb downsize in this economy, we tend to see more engineers and inventors who now have time to work on that great idea. It almost seems that as the economy dives, people pursue ideas of intellectual property."

During the long recession, the library staff has seen an increase in small-business owners who use the library to do research on other businesses in the same fields, as well as on grants, advertising, and government assistance. Library use by people out of work has also grown. Caroline Johnson, head of the Central Library's business division, observes that almost all job applications must now be submitted online. Potential applicants who lack either the computer skills or the equipment typically turn to the library.

"A lot of people assume that everybody has a computer, but that's not the case," Johnson says. "In tough times, more people come in to do their resumes, but even there we run into complications. We're teaching people how to do resumes as well as helping them use computers. We've even had people come in with their information on floppy discs, so we had to buy a portable disc drive. The main thing is that we're meeting needs."

A certain amount of library work is pretty prosaic, but Central Library staff members do it in an unusually handsome setting. The 1931 Rundel Building has a strong facade with a mix of neo-classical lines and Art Deco ornamentation. Just inside is one of Rochester's most beautiful spaces: a high, spacious reading room with rich wood and a beautifully restored stained-glass ceiling (be sure to look up). Across the street, the Bausch and Lomb addition, open since 1997, has comfortable Arts & Crafts appointments inside regardless of what you may think about its architecture. Both places bustle a lot of the time, yet they still invite you to linger and browse to see what you can find.

There is always something going on: dozens of people working at some of the 85 computer workstations, others attending a review of a new book or a talk on a current issue, and a gaggle of children and parents listening to a librarian read a new kid's book aloud. The number of programs in 2009 increased in a single year from 701 to 830, and attendance for them grew by 23 percent to nearly 30,000 people.

In addition to the Central Library at South Avenue and Broad Street, there are 10 additional branches scattered through the City and 19 town libraries from Brighton to Webster - all of them constituting the Monroe County Library System. But the Central Library is at the center of the action, the biggest and most diverse of all the libraries. Each year it circulates hundreds of thousands of items - books, DVDs, CDs, even e-books. Through interlibrary loans, the Central Library sends out millions of items to other libraries in the city and county.

Yet when I asked Tuzzeo how many items had circulated from her division, she couldn't tell me. "We don't keep those kinds of records," she said, "Nobody's supposed to know what you choose." This is a place where only the occasional prying politician or self-appointed caretaker of morality tries to tell you what you can or can't read, hear, or view. A library is where the First Amendment gets its daily exercise.

That said, practical limitations sometimes intrude on good intentions. Uttaro says that the library's budget has been flat for the last few years despite rising prices for materials and supplies. The staff has had to scramble to stay ahead of heavy use that increases annually. The library has also had to cancel some very expensive annual database updates (for magazines and newspapers, for example) and try to fill the gaps with less costly but also less complete replacements.

Uttaro says that the struggle is to figure out how to operate at the same level with "record-breaking usage levels" as aid from the state and county either declines or remains flat. "We could be open 75 hours a week and it still wouldn't be enough," she says.

It's hard to imagine a healthy democracy without a thriving, free public library. If any one quality expresses the soul of the place, Sally Snow says, "It's curiosity - a passion that shapes your life."

Uttaro says something very similar: "It's the combination of learning and knowledge. A library gives free and easy access to people who want to better themselves. If there's anything you want to learn, come to the library. It's one of the last places where nobody is looking over your shoulder."

A noble sentiment, but Snow has the last word as she thinks about the future of libraries, and especially this particular library: "I wish I could harvest a money tree."