The LadyKillers

The Best Things in Life Are ... at Your Library

By Margaret Lucke

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
Jorge Luis Borges, author

A public library is an amazing place. You can choose a book or a DVD and take it home--for free. If you need a computer, you can use one there--for free. You can attend a concert, or hear an author speak, or take a child to listen to stories--all for free.

A library offers a wealth of education and entertainment at no charge. As it happens, though, it costs a lot of money to do that.

"A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life."
Henry Ward Beecher, social reformer

For nearly four decades my town--Hercules, California--had no public library, so there was a huge celebration when our beautiful new library opened in 2006. The enthusiasm continues. The library gets close to 4,000 visitors a week. Last year more than 5,600 people attended nearly 400 free programs and checked out nearly a quarter of a million books and other materials. In many ways the library has brought the community together and become its heart.

I’m on the board of the Friends of the Hercules Library, just one of many active library supporters and volunteers.

"A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people.
It is a never failing spring in the desert."
Andrew Carnegie, businessman and philanthropist

Until last summer the library was open 45 hours a week. The county library system funded 35 hours and the city funded 10 more. But last year financial difficulties forced the city to eliminate its contribution. Ten weekly hours were scheduled to be cut from the library’s schedule. That meant its open hours would below the 40 hours a week that the county library requires of its branches in order to maintain their full-time professional staff.

The library’s supporters were determined to make sure the library could retain its outstanding librarians and preserve the high quality of its services. So we quickly organized HELP--the Hercules Emergency Library Project--to raise $50,000 to keep the library open 40 hours a week during the current fiscal year. We held garage sales and a dinner dance, and passed the hat at meetings of local groups. We collected a few checks for $1,000 or more, and lots and lots of coins and crumpled dollar bills. I’m very proud to say we’ve succeeded in reaching our goal. 

Now we have to gear up to do it again next year.

"The best thing about the library is that it is available not only to me,
but to everyone. It does not discriminate."
David Horowitz, political writer

Some people would have you think that in this era of Internet access and high-tech gadgets, public libraries are obsolete. Not so. They are well used though, sadly, not well funded.

Libraries are among the most democratic of our institutions. The access they provide to computers, books, films, and music is invaluable, not only to individuals but to our society. Libraries bring people together. They enlighten and inspire. They open the doors to the world.

"Libraries are places where the imagination begins."
Heather Barbieri, author

Have you been to your local library lately? I urge your to pay a visit and see all that it has to offer. While you’re there, check out some books, because funding is often based in part on circulation numbers. Join your Friends group. Make a donation. Vote for tax or bond measures that will secure its funding. Your library deserves your support.

"Libraries are a public good and a civic responsibility.
They are about our future as much as they are our past."
Andrew Lopez, university librarian

Libraries

Staci here, on my every other Saturday.

Just hearing the word “library” instantly soothes me. I immediately feel myself pulled back into the hushed world of long, full book shelves and whispered conversations. Like Ann mentioned in her Thursday blog, one of my favorite jobs was also working at a library while I was attending college. I loved wandering the aisles, pushing around a cart full of books and reshelving them while people sat at the tables or in the comfy chairs, some studying, others reading for enjoyment. The library provides endless possibilities for discovering new subjects, learning a little bit about everything or a lot about one thing.

Of course, nowadays, this same feat is possible on the internet. You can enter any subject in Google and get back a list of hundreds or even thousands of web sites covering that one topic. But sitting at a computer doing research doesn’t have the same sense of accomplishment as roaming the rows at the library, reading the titles on the spines, and finding the exact book you need. And sometimes I can’t Google a particular topic because I haven’t thought of it yet. More than once, a book has caught my eye while browsing the various library displays and introduced me to topics I never knew I was interested in. It’s much harder to stumble across things on the internet.

But now the internet has made its way to the library. Being used to the silent atmosphere with the stern librarian shushing anyone who made too much noise, I was initially resistant to the introduction of computer labs at the library. How could librarians maintain that sense of quiet and studiousness with tables of buzzing machines and flickering monitors? Then I admitted to myself that the days of sending your kid down to the library to research their latest book report project are fading fast. Libraries need to offer internet access to stay competitive with home computers and smartphones.

In the end, I decided that if the availability of computers draws in extra patrons who then discover all the benefits and wonders that still exist at the public library, then I’m all for it. Just as long as they don’t talk too loud. 

Libraries I Have Loved -- by Sharan

The main branch of the Multnomah County library in Portland was my haunt all through high school.  It was built in 1913 with palatial staircases, high ceilings and long windows.  I did all my term papers there and discovered authors both modern and lost in time.

It has always been my ideal of what a library should be.

Like Ann, I grew up with the idea that silence was the cardinal rule for libraries.  Recently, I’ve noticed that it is no longer the case.  At first this bothered me.   Then I started paying attention to the nature of the noise: a storyteller enthralling children and adults, people being tutored in math, parents reading to their children and librarians giving reference information.  That is what a library should be, even if Marian the Librarian might not approve.

Over the years, I have had the chance to do research in some elegant libraries.  Two of the best are the Cathedral library at the University of Durham in England.  It is part of the cathedral complex, a thousand years old, in a long room that used to be a monks’ refectory.  To leave, I walked through the cloister and into the church, past the grave of St. Cuthbert near the altar.  The Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is six hundred years younger but redolent of the extravagance of pre-revolutionary France.  Now it houses manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the present.  One of my greatest thrills was to be able to look through a manuscript I had been studying.  I put my hand up to turn the page and saw the roughened mark in the vellum where thousands of people over the past 800 years had touched it. 

But architecture doesn’t make a good library, of course.  One of the most important libraries I found was just a wall across from the coat rack at the one-room school house in Egegik, Alaska.  This collection not only provides book for the students but is the only library in a town inaccessible by roads with a population that dwindles to only about 100 people each winter.  This is the best kind of public library.

As a writer and historian, I have amassed a fairly comprehensive collection of my own.  For years I dreamed of having all the books out of boxes and arranged on shelves where I could get to them every time I needed a reference.  About fifteen years ago, I bought a house solely because it had a long room that might have space for them all.  My sister designed it and had it built and now I have my own quasi-elegant library, although the collect has expanded to the point that there are boxes under the stairs again.  It is often cluttered with papers and noisy with children or meetings, but I have finally come to terms with my antiquated notions of what a library is and I revel in it.

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Breaking News: Sharan will be on the Barbara Simpson show tomorrow (Saturday) at 5:00pm, talking about the end of the world.  The link to listen on line is:  http://www.ksfo560.com/showdj.asp?DJID=2364

Shhhh! The Tale of Ann the Library Enforcer

Ann Parker here, every-other-Thursday at the LadyKillers. Libraries, I love 'em. As I thought about my decades of experiences at libraries, I realized that my most and least favorite jobs were both at a library... the same library, it so happens, where Camille helped orchestrate the Pass the Book event she talks about in her post yesterday.

At the time of my story, I was a student at a nearby junior college. (This was in the Dark Ages, aka early 1970s, when community colleges were still called junior colleges.) I had to get a job to support myself, and I was getting pretty desperate. On the job board (which was a real cork board, not a virtual job website), I spotted a listing at a nearby library. The job paid *really* well by the standards of the day: about $13 an hour, as I recall. (Remember, this was the early '70s, when the minimum wage was about $1.65 per hour, according to this chart.) Wow! Talk about good money! The job was also only two hours a day four or so times a week, so it wouldn't overly impact my coursework. For a poor college student, it was perfect.

Only one teensy problem:

This incredibly well-paying job entailed being the "enforcer." This was the era when libraries were supposed to be quiet--all the time and everywhere. (Nowadays, libraries seem to favor "quiet rooms" and to tolerate the rumble of conversations. Not back then, I assure you.) My job was to roam the floors, looking intimidating, glaring at people who dared to talk too loud, and basically telling them to pipe down... or else.

Folks who are reading this and know me well are probably chortling right about now. Intimidation is not my strong suit, and back then, it was even less so. The job was, in a word, painful. I honestly didn't like it. I dreaded the days when I went to work. But it was only two hours at a whack, and it paid the rent (and the textbooks!), so I persevered.

Library enforcer was my least favorite job, ever.

Now, for my favorite job, which was at the same library.

You see, after some space of time (can't remember exactly how long... four to six months, I think), the position of "enforcer" was cut. The head librarian, who had to deliver the bad news to me, offered that there was a position opening as library aide, if I wanted it. "It doesn't pay nearly as well," she warned. "But you'll get more hours, so that will help a bit."

I jumped at the offer. Being a library aide was my dream job come true. I was assigned two areas in the stacks—one in the children's room, the other in adult non-fiction. I was responsible for shelving books in those two areas and keeping them in order. I also worked the front desk, checking books out with one of those old-fashioned date stamps. I chatted with patrons, and answered their questions or directed them to a librarian.

And I didn't have to shush a soul.

I kept that job all through junior college. When I was accepted to UC Berkeley, the head librarian tried to convince me that I could somehow manage a commute between Berkeley and the library so I could keep my job. I was tempted, but I was moving to Berkeley and figured my studies would not allow (at least at first) for me to hold down a job as well. So, with great reluctance and sadness, I said good-bye to the best job ever.

I tell you... I think if someone offered me that job today (in today's dollars), I'd be very very very tempted.

So, that's it. My library stories. I still love libraries, and when I need a little peace and quiet, a little salve for the soul, the libary is where I go. Libraries are miracles of civilization. When I give thanks this season, libraries will definitely be on my list!

News and LIBRARIES

News

No news this week from the LadyKillers... We're all busy getting ready for the holiday season... ho ho ho!

Libraries - Topic for the coming week

"Libraries:  The medicine chest of the soul."  ~Library at Thebes, inscription over the door

Reading room of the library at the University of Graz, in Austria.

A community library in Ethiopia