Visit a Library

Let me just say up front, this post is not about Kangoo Jumps, in any way at all. Sometimes Loraine Says something besides JUMP! Today Loraine Says visit a library!

I love libraries. They are one of the few things that were always there for me, no matter what else was going on in my life. Not only do I recommend taking your children there, or your nieces and nephews, or anyone else you know, I also recommend going by yourself so you can take your time and savor the experience.

My first memory of being in a library is from kindergarten. There was a library in the basement of the elementary school I was attending. Actually, since it was on a hillside, the front doors were ground level but the other three sides were windowless and underground. I have a clear memory of checking out Dr. Suess books, and can picture myself carrying three out the door on a sunny day. Even at that young age, I knew this was a special place I would want to remember.

By the time my younger sisters were in school also, we had moved up to the public library, and needed a ride to get there. Around the age of eleven, I remember looking through a thick, non-fiction book about child development, trying to figure out if I was normal or not. (I can hear my sweet readers now, wondering if I have figured that out yet or not. No, I have not.)

The year I turned twelve, we moved to a much smaller town. While they did have a public library, it was not much bigger than a large living room in a house. I only remember bookshelves along the walls, not any free-standing shelving. While this was disappointing, they did still have a few things I could make use of. One bonus was that it was within walking distance of my house.

The library in my junior high-senior high school (as secondary schools were called then) was about four times the size of my town library. I think this is when I discovered science fiction, and probably read every sci-fi title they had. I learned later that both of my younger sisters worked in the school library a few hours a week after I graduated. Apparently love of a decent library is in our DNA.

About this time, a relative started buying Reader's Digest Condensed best sellers for our family, or maybe giving them to us used but looking still new. I read all of them too. I was probably the only teenager I knew who actually read Airport, The Agony and The Ecstasy, and other fiction that did not feature children.

The only library I remember from my years in the Air  Force was the USO library on the Navy base in Iceland. That helped keep me sane during a very strange and interesting year. They even took requests! If I gave them the information, they would try to arrange to borrow specific titles from other USO libraries, or try to buy them or get them donated.

When I left the Air Force to go to college, I started at a smaller "branch" campus of Penn State, in Allentown. The entire campus at that time was located in a former elementary school building. The library was about as big as two classrooms. Feeling nouveau riche with the GI bill funding my education, I could afford paperback science fiction on occasion. I still re-read some of these  books like visiting old friends. One of my classes was in the library as well, Rocks on TV (Geosystems). They did not have a teacher for the course at our small campus, so I watched videotapes and sat with a box of rocks in front of me.  Good times!

When I moved to the main campus of Penn State, I found the largest library I had ever seen, Pattee Library. I loved the entire ambience of being around that many books. In fact, I took part in a sit-in at midnight to protest closing the library at midnight. I guess this makes me a true geek, that my only college protest was to keep the library open longer.

After grad school, I had a job and moved from libraries to bookstores to feed my need to read. It was not until I was married with children that I came back to public libraries big time. I found I could bring my three little ones to the library and they would entertain themselves quietly, and leave happily clutching as many books as they could each carry. (That was the rule, you can have as many as you can carry by yourself.) We returned every week or two for more, and more, and more. As they got older, two of them worked in the public library part-time, and volunteered with the library's teen group that performed summer theater for younger children.

Now that my children are all over 21, I still go to the library for many reasons. Sometimes I want a specific title I've read about. Sometimes I need a variety of information on a particular topic. Sometimes I like to find the right area, then browse for books I would not find any other way except proximity to a topic. Sometimes I need an escape (both the fiction AND the time alone in the library). Most of the time I could find the book in a bookstore, but frankly I don't need to keep the book, I need what's IN the book. I do not enjoy reading a screen, and would much prefer to array myself strangely across a chair or couch and hold a book in my hand. Or sit out on the deck. Or read in a waiting room or in line. I just prefer books.

I think I have been to the Library of Congress, but they don't really let most people just wander around among their books, so it was not much fun. When we were looking at colleges, the most impressive thing the tour guide at the University of Virginia said to us was that they are considered the back up library to the Library of Congress, and you can walk through the multiple buildings of their library freely (mostly).

OK, here is the bottom line. Use libraries for whatever resources they offer, because if we don't, someone will think we don't need them and start decreasing their funding, their staffing, their holdings, their resources, and—ultimately—the good they can do you and everyone else.