They face budget cuts and closures, but they're a lifeline for people like
me. Libraries should get more respect
by: Mary Elizabeth Williams
This afternoon, I’m picking up my younger daughter from school and I’m taking
her someplace special. It’s a place she and I can look at works by local
artists, where we can read quietly together, where we almost always run into
friends. It’s one of best places in the world. You’ve probably got something
like it where you live too. It’s called
the
library.
Libraries are not terribly fashionable. You’d think they would be. In a world
in which educated, enlightened, planet-hugging types are all up in that
composting and upcycling and no impact lifestyle, these wonderful places where
you can just borrow stuff and then bring it back so someone else can enjoy it
somehow languish. Last year was the first year in several that New York City
libraries
didn’t face any budget
cuts – though branches shut after Hurricane Sandy
remain
unrestored.
Libraries
in Detroit have been shuttered in the city’s economic crisis. In the
U.K.,
libraries face closures as the number of people using them plummets.
I should not have to sell anybody on the idea that libraries are awesome. But
in case you haven’t been to one lately: Libraries are awesome. Maybe you need
reminding. I get that. Though I’d like to say that I’ve always had a native love
of them myself, it’s not true. I came to them later in life. I’ve always loved
to read, but I didn’t grow up in an especially bookish household. Trips to the
local library were exceptionally rare. My first consistent era of library-going
was in college, where I learned to associate libraries with microfiche-induced
migraines and hung-over naps. Then when I lived in Boston, I became a member of
the Athenæum, one of the most
gloriously beautiful sanctuaries for
books on the planet. And then, after that, I had children.
When you’re a mother desperate to entertain young kids and the winter
afternoons are long, dark and cold, those preschool story times are the bomb. I
loved my little Brooklyn library. And when, shortly after moving to my current
neighborhood eight years ago, my family was thrust into a serious economic
crisis, our new library became our new greatest resource. There was a free
after-school science program I enrolled the kids in. There were events and
performances. Best of all, there were piles and piles and piles of DVDs and
reading materials. Storybooks. Crafts books. Parenting books. Books on how to
get through cancer. In the ensuing years, my family and I have grown to
appreciate our local branch so deeply, because we know whatever else life may
throw at us, as long as that library is there, at least we will never run out of
books.
My daughters are growing up in a world in which libraries are largely
optional. They do their homework via Google. My friends vary from enthusiastic
library supporters to plenty of quizzical, “Is that a book
made of
paper you’re reading? Are those
numbers on the spine?” types.
That’s OK. The world is changing and so are libraries. The NYPL, for instance,
has come under criticism for its plans to renovate in ways that would remove
research materials in favor of a more
“populist
hangout” design.
I’m no foe of research, but I am grateful for the hangout aspect of libraries
as well. As Caitlin Moran perfectly states,
“A
library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a
life raft and a festival.” I’m lucky to live
in a city where I can take my family on the subway and go to a main branch that
is an architectural work of art, where we can attend world-class lectures and
exhibits. But I’m happiest on the long
afternoons I spend in our small uptown branch. I like being among the people who come to my branch for
English language classes, the retirees who sit and read the newspaper, the rowdy
kids who are killing time before they go home, and moms of young children
reading their tots Ezra Jack Keats. My library is rarely quiet. I like it that
way. It crackles with life.
And I still buy books, but they’re a very special luxury in a typically New
York City life in which money and apartment space are both in short supply. I’m
sure someday I’ll get around to getting a Kindle or an iPad, but right now, I’m
content with the smell and the texture of paper books, especially the
from-the-library kind. I love knowing the book I have for a little while is on a
journey through many different hands. I love finding the receipts and the
postcards inside them, and imagining who they belonged to. I like the
connection. Reading is solitary but libraries are shared. Once, during a
difficult period when I was looking for answers, I took out a self-help book and
found a sweet, supportive letter to the next person who needed it tucked within.
The note ended with an encouraging “Good luck to you!” and it made me smile when
I read it. The book itself, it turned out, wasn’t that hot. But the note got me
through. And when I returned the book to the library I left the message there,
for the next person who checked it out.
from:
Salon
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