Library Litany

Today my classes are going to the library.

When I was young, going to the library was a real treat. We visited the scriptorium, filled to the ceiling with rolls of papyrus just waiting to be read. If we were on our best behavior, the librarian would dust off stone tablets for us to read!

Well, it was a treat, though not quite so old-fashioned.

I grew up in an era and area in which going to the library was almost like going to college. Few people went, fewer still learned from the visit. I, oddly enough for a farm boy, was among the few who would bury my nose in the books and come up educated. Trips to the library were reward for good behavior. Whenever we went to town, I was able to con my way into a library visit. (I still have my original library card, from almost 40 years ago!) I still have the four or five books I owned as a kid, but hundreds more went through my hands via the library!

When I was a child, I read everything I could get my hands on. I think this was due to my father's model behavior--he read a novel a day (very strange for a farmer) and had a den lined floor to ceiling with books. I can still remember giving my parents a book report on a biography of Ulysses Grant (I was scheduled to do this at school and was wigging out, so they had me practice with them.) It was that kind of modeling and support that kept me deep in the books.

When I went to college, my first job was...in the university library! This place was unfathomably huge, literally containing millions of books. While my hometown library was only one floor, this library was eight floors! One of my first observations, duly recorded in my journal from my first college experience, was that the libraries both smelled the same! I have since come to learn that virtually all libraries smell the same--some bookish smell that is a mix of musty paper and book binding glues, maybe.

Over the years, I have been a "Friend of" several libraries, been on library committees, and built up (and let go of) an impressive library of my own. Oh, I know what they say about libraries going away due to the Internet, but they said television would go away, too, and it has not. I recall the claim that movies would surrender to the home video, but that never happened, either. No, I think libraries are going to be with us a long, long time. They are evolving, becoming more multi-media and hip, but they are not going away.

During wars, libraries are special targets, either to be preserved, sacked, or burned--depending on the sentiment of the warring faction. Benjamin Franklin was a promoter of the modern American lending library, and we all owe him, in my opinion, a debt of gratitude greater than any owed to a president or political leader, statesmen or inventor.

I love libraries!