Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman gets a read on The New York Public Library

There still is something to be said for losing yourself in a library, as filmmaker Frederick Wiseman did.

Noted for 50 years-plus of exhaustive examinations of a single subject in each of his documentaries – as in “Basic Training,” “High School,” “Ballet” and “Titicut Follies” – the director makes one of the most famous sites for reading and researching his topic in “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library,” making its PBS premiere Tuesday, Sept. 4 (check local listings). Of that system’s 92 locations, Wiseman visited more than a dozen during three months of filming. The result earned a 2017 award at the 74th Venice International Film Festival.

“It sounds like a cliche,” Wiseman says, “but I just woke up one morning and thought, ‘I haven’t done a library. That would be a good subject.’ In fact, I don’t think I had been in a library in 40 or 45 years. I thought I was just going to make a movie about a place that lent books and had archives. I had no idea of the courses and programs it offers.”

While much of “Ex Libris” focuses on the Public Library’s main base on 42nd Street, “there are sequences in 13 other branches,” Wiseman explains. “I didn’t know about the challenges that libraries are facing, and what I learned about them is what you see in the film. There’s a lot of talk in it about the relationship of libraries to their communities. Somebody says, ‘The library is the great democratic institution,’ and that’s certainly what I observed. It’s open to everybody, regardless of race, class, economic position, etc. As long as they don’t disturb the peace.”

Most Wiseman documentaries don’t feature familiar faces, but music’s Elvis Costello and Patti Smith turn up in “Ex Libris.” The filmmaker explains, “One of the things The New York Public Library does is to bring in people who have written books, and the reason Elvis Costello is in there is that he just had written a memoir. Patti Smith was there for the same reason.”

Though Wiseman (whose latest project is the small-town profile “Monrovia, Indiana”) was unaware of PBS’ “The Great American Read” series, which starts its weekly run Sept. 11, he appreciates – especially in a world moving ever faster – any venture that spotlights reading and the locations and organizations that facilitate it.