The Library

I am running out of hiatus! Who ever thought that would actually happen. I am also running out of locations to ramble about, but one of the ones I really want to get to is the Storybrooke Library.
If you've been reading these, you've seen me banging on about liminality, transitions, and stories as containers. Well, what is a library but a mammoth container for stories? There is a thing in fiction called "literalizing the metaphor." It is one of the OUaT writers' favorite tactics, and the library is an outstanding example. It also has recurring links to the villains in the series.

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That clock tower is CGI. They could have put it on any building in town, but they chose to put it on the library, to make that location the centerpiece of the first and last symbol-laden actions in S1. When Emma first spends a night in Storybrooke, the clock begins to turn. When she faces the dragon, she does so under the library.

Like the well, the library stands on the border between Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest, and it functions on multiple levels.
"We may sit in our library, and yet be in all quarters of the Earth," Rumple quotes John Lubbock to Belle. There is a natural link of course to the Disney Beauty and the Beast, but in this case it is also literally true.

The library contains infinite worlds in book form, but is also a physical connection to the tunnels under Storybrooke. Those tunnels hold a dragon -- even in a land without magic -- and Snow's coffin, giving them a symbolic if not actual link with Regina's vault and to the Enchanted Forest. They connect to the beach, and so ultimately to other realms via water. They contain the diamonds that (however inconsistently) provide Storybrooke's magic.
Regina is mentioned at one point as having closed the library. The Dark Curse created, among its many other effects, a fully stocked but shuttered small-town library; it's other worlds were inaccessible, and its prominent clock never moved. This is Regina trying to stop the universe again, to close all avenues of escape for those subject to the curse, even mental ones. Perhaps a town that is entirely closed-off and lost in time cannot afford to have people read too much. Just as with her vault, however, she prefers to save things for future use rather than destroy them. Hence the existence of the fail-safe spell and its unique guardian.
Appropriately enough, events at the library tend to be heavily weighted with symbolic importance.
Emma has the most iconic visit to date in the S1 finale. She takes a leap in her individual Hero's Journey with a literal descent into the underworld to fight a monster and retrieve nothing less than the essence of True Love. This makes for a nice parallel with "Desperate Souls," as I consider it Emma's knighting, and cognate with her accepting the office of sheriff, keeping her dual self in balance.

Her connection with the place is otherwise slim, however. In Season 2, Rumple is instrumental in re-opening the library, just as he was in bringing a more literal form of magic to Storybrooke. He has nothing to fear from anything within; if anything, the Dark One has more experience with and understanding of how stories are shaped than any other character.
It is Belle who has the key to the place, and by first forming her connection with the library in 2.04, they draw a subtle connecting line between Belle and Milah, both of them looking for worlds beyond what they know. "The Outsider" makes a further parallel between Belle's encounter with Hook in the library and her first encounter with the Yaoguai -- at that time, seen as an uncomplicated monster. (Which makes Rumple Mulan for that moment? Sometimes the structural parallels in this show get weird.)
The library is at one point the cursed dagger's hiding place -- both the map and the thing itself reside there, and the clock tower is where Cora acquires it. It is also where Rumple attempts his ritual to free himself from the artifact's control. Tunnels and stars connect there; the library touches heaven and hell.
When Regina goes to face the dragon of her own creation, to retrieve her own tool for ultimate destruction, she does not go alone or bearing a sword; she brings someone expendable.

(I am tempted to read something into the fact that so many events at the library to date have involved Hook. Rogue characters tend to be comfortable with borders. Which brings us to our next point....)

I could not have been more excited than I was when they directly addressed the unstable nature of reality in this particular library with Will and Robin. The fact that it was there, surrounded by the paper-bound incarnations of worlds we have been told are all literally real somewhere, that they found the alternate page of the book, made me squee as much as anything ever has.

And one of the things I'm most dying to know is whether this is just an Easter egg, or whether Will finding a picture of a brig with a yellow stripe in this exact moment -- when it seems like reality blinked long enough for someone to slide a page into Robin's pack -- is meaningful.