My heart is filled with gladness.
I sauntered into my local library this afternoon and requested a library card. The kind librarian (have you ever met an unkind librarian?) apologized because they only had the keychain-size cards available.
“We’ve had so many people sign up for library cards this week that we haven’t had time to get new ones in yet. I’m so sorry!”
There was no need to apologize. I assured her that I couldn’t have been happier at the news. They don’t have a grocery store in this post-Katrina seaside community. But they have a library and people are flocking to it as a resource.
That makes me glad.
There’s room here for extended punditry regarding the future of publishing, what happens to communities that lose their libraries, and the difference between a computer screen waiting for questions and a shelf of books filled with answers.
Perhaps you’ll add a bit of that.
Image: Library
I can’t even begin to describe how jealous I am that you have a nice, homey local library. (Shh! I love the smell of books, and always take a deep breath whenever I walk into a library.)
The English library is two hours away and it’s filled with patriotic books, pictorial books on airplanes and weapons, biographies of esteemed individuals such as Dick Cheney, faux spirituality books, and best-seller paperbacks.
Okay, so that’s a slight exaggeration… but those certainly are the dominant types of books. It’s what I’d expect on a military base, but I do miss the eclectic selection back home.
FWIW, unkind librarians do exist. (I know this because I have worked in multiple libraries.) They’re rare, but they’re out there.
I used to work in my little local library. It’s truly a comfortable place to be; almost an escape from the technology-filled, big, real world.