What’s Heroic About Libraries?

April 12th, 2010 | Author: Erin Blakemore

It’s National Library Week, and I’m forced to reflect on the importance and power of my favorite libraries and librarians. Frankly, I’m well over most media portrayals of librarians as shushing, finger-wagging arbiters of old-school values. Everyone else I knew when I was a kid wanted to do something daring…I wanted to spend every day, night, and weekend in a library and lusted over stamps, cards, and catalogs. For me, librarians are personal heroines (and not just because I’m a library school dropout), and I’m lucky enough to count several employed and not-yet-there librarians among my closest friends and role models. Here are a few of my favorite library memories:

Mrs. Walton: When I was very small, my mom and I would walk to the Oak Park public library in San Diego to get my weekly dose of books. Mrs. Gloria Walton (mother of the epic basketball star Bill Walton) was really tall and really friendly and really, really helpful. She’s the woman who led me to the shelves with Laura Ingalls Wilder and Beverly Cleary books on them, and she’s one of the people I credit with the love of reading that has sustained and saved me my whole life long.

The Summer Suck: The library in the suburban San Diego community where I spent my teenage years, frankly, sucked. It was one room with a scanty selection of books, but I still visited it religiously, walking a mile or so to get there, loading up my backpack with as many books as it would hold, taking time to peek into the trashy novels I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading, and walking home, often reading the entire time. It was a humble place, but I still remember it fondly because it felt like home.

The Coven: When I was in college, I worked at the Sophia Smith Collection, an incredible archive housed in the former Smith College Gymnasium building where the first women’s basketball game ever was played, home of the collections of the papers of people like Margaret Sanger and Agnes deMille. As I toiled over the painstaking work of preserving and cataloging the papers of Judith Raskin and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, I was consistently amazed by the collegiality, good humor, and grace of what my boss there called “the archival coven,” women who had devoted their entire lives to the preservation of women’s history and who patiently helped legions of students and researchers make their way through their impressive collection. I am oh so jealous and oh so encouraged that Smith now has an entire archival concentration to offer students, and I can honestly say that the time spent in that library is among the happiest I can recall.

What about you? What are your favorite library memories?

Posted in Blog | Tags: books, librarians, library, memories, national library week, reading, smith college, the heroine's bookshelf

http://www.anaccomplishedyounglady.com Beth Dunn

I grew up five doors down from the tiny little village library in my corner of Cape Cod. My bus stop was in front of the library, in fact. In middle school, I used to hide behind the bushes out front when the bus came, so I could skip school and hang out in the library all day instead.

I read and re-read everything in the young adult section so many times, I can remember the librarian desperately trying to introduce me to WWII books, just to get me to read SOMETHING I hadn’t already read seventy-eleven times.

My best friend from high school became a librarian (Wellesley, BTW), although she will be the first to admit that it isn’t what she expected.

No stamps.

I would have gotten into it for the stamps alone.
http://littlelightreading.blogspot.com lucy

thanks for posting about librarians and librarians, since i am one and its national library week … yay! we librarians are a varied lot (like most professions) but we’re always happy when someone has good memories of the library from childhood.

i got my first real kiss behind the little compton public library, so that’s got to be my fondest memory, and perhaps the reason i’m a librarian today.

as for librarians i remember fondly, i blogged about them the other day:
http://eleganceofwords.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-75-of-365.html
Julie

When applying for work studies at my college, I knew that the library would be my first choice! This was about a year and a half ago, when I was a freshman, and I was overwhelmed with being away from home, tough classes, rooming situations, etc. Linda, the wonderful circ desk librarian, interviewed me, made me feel at ease right away, and gave me a job as a bookshelver.

About a week and a half later, my family suffered an unspeakable tragedy. I needed to go home for a few days, and when I went to tell Linda that I would have to miss work, I told her exactly what had happened as I burst into tears. She took me into her office and talked to me for over an hour; she gave me her phone number and encouraged me to call her at any time, day or night. She talked to me every day afterward to make sure I was okay. I can’t explain how much she means to me! She proves that librarians who care about books AND people are the best ones of all.
http://www.buriedinprint.com Buried In Print

A “humble place”. That sums up one of my favourite libraries, a very small library in a very small town with a very small collection, but it was my escape. They actually tracked the loans by hand and recorded them under your card # (mine was 112, which I remember more easily than I remember my current PIN, although this is 30 years ago now) and the librarians did not hesitate to offer advice. They all seemed, to me, to be about three hundred years old. Which was appropriate because the collection was very old-fashioned too.
http://katieleigh.wordpress.com Katie @ cakes, tea and dreams

I have loved lots of libraries – school, public and college. I remember checking out the Cats soundtrack from the public library in my hometown, and browsing the travel shelves up there, which is how I discovered a few writers I love. I had a friend who worked in Special Collections at our college, and once gave me the behind-the-scenes tour – all the curiosities and crazy stuff.

Love this post.
http://www.mischiefmaricookies.com/blog/ mari

When I was writing screenplays full-time [I'm on a self-imposed break at the moment...:(] I spent my afternoons writing at the Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles. Yes, LA does have a Downtown, although it’s not really the center of the city. The Central Library is still my favorite place here. It’s a beautiful place to spend an afternoon, just reading or researching. And since you’re talking about librarians, I’ve yet to meet one who doesn’t like his/her job! It saddens me to think that because California is so broke, government officials are thinking of trimming back hours and activities at the libraries. It’s a shame when money’s tight, some of the most important and meaningful institutions get hit first…
http://www.originalimpulseblog.com Cynthia Morris

I didn’t know it was National Library Week! Not that it matters to me; every week is library week.

I am so enamored of libraries, when I was a girl, I’d come home with a huge stack of books. Before reading them, I’d play ‘library’, checking the books into my own system, passing the cards through my dresser drawer, logging them in my book register.

I was even eligible for the books by mail program, and had books delivered to me in brown padded envelopes.

I applied for a job years ago at Denver Public Library. While they loved my responses to their Qs (“Wow, we should record that and play that for our employees,” one interviewer commented), they didn’t hire me.

I got my bookish education instead at Capitol Hill Books.

After living abroad and not reading so much, I’m so happy to be back in the US so I can use the library. In both Boulder and Denver I live right by the central library, so it’s a pleasant walk. I go every week at least once.

I could go on and on about libraries, but I’ll stop there. Thanks for sharing your library love and inviting us to share ours!

Read on,

Cynthia
http://litandlife.blogspot.com Lisa

When I was growing up, in the old days before the internet and personal computers, we went to the library to study. Loved to go to the city branch and see what cute boys might also be there studying. It was so fun to sneak around the library and peek through the shelves!