OUTSIDE of college campuses and romantic comedies, the library is not usually a place to pick up a date. But that didn’t stop several dozen singles, mostly in their 20s and 30s, from showing up on a recent Tuesday night at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library for its first speed-dating session.

Among them was Jeremiah Lee, a 33-year-old software engineer who said he had not stepped foot in a public library in years. “The kind of person the library can attract is different than the kind you get at a bar,” said Mr. Lee, who wore a dark purple fleece and blue jeans for the occasion. Participants were asked to bring a favorite book, so he clutched a copy of “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy.

In a basement meeting room a boombox played love songs while daters were assigned numbers and had four minutes to chat, flirt or wrinkle their noses at one another’s literary tastes. Then the men rotated, book in tow, to the next woman. Later, librarians would tally scorecards and connect any two people who indicated mutual interest.

Can “Atlas Shrugged” find love with the “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”? Is attraction possible between a Jonathan Franzen reader and a die-hard Elizabeth Gilbert fan?