. . . . I can go twice as high! Take a look, it’s in a book – Reading Rainbow.
Sorry, I was having an early 80’s PBS flashback 🙂 But seriously-I love books. I always have. I remember when I was a kid, my parents actually used to threaten to take my books away as a punishment/incentive 🙂 Come to think of it, I don’t remember them ever actually doing it.
To me two of the most wonderful places in the world are the bookstore and the library. I was especially fond of the library in Bangor Maine, where I grew up. It was in a beautiful old building (built in the early 1900s) and looked like a mansion from the outside. The inside was all wooden floors and dark wood panneling, with a set of marble steps you had to go up to get into the library. It was the sort of place with huge windows that turned the motes of dust into little dancing sparkles in the sunlight. A magical place to a child who loves to read! It also was a closed stacks library-I don’t even know if those exist anymore! The childrens books were all out on shelves, but only a small selection of the adult books were on some shelves out front, the rest were stored in the closed stacks, and you had to use an actual honest to goodness card catalog-a whole wall of little tiny drawers-to look up the book you needed. Then you’d take one of those stubby little pencils and write the dewey decimal number on a little scrap of paper, and give it to the librarian behind the desk. They would dissapear for long minutes and come back eventually with the books you requested.
I always had a bad habit of taking out 8 or 10 books at a time on all sorts of different topics-then I’d forget the due date and return them all 4 days late and have to pay a pretty sizeable fine (for a public library anyway) My parents always used to joke that my fines subsidized the new addition that was built onto the library. They even gave me a christmas tree ornament of the library, sort of as a joke, because I had paid so much into it that I should own it!
When I entered the Army after college I was stationed in Germany for 3 years, and our post didn’t have a library. I started buying books. You know, books add up fast, especially when you can read over 300 pages in a day (course, that was back in the old days before kids)
I took me a while to rediscover libraries after I got back to the states. Now I am a dedicated library fanatic. Libraries today are so much more than books. Our little public library has wi-fi (which admittedly I don’t need) Internet terminals, one computer dedicated solely to childrens games, coloring pages, puzzles, childrens and grownup videos and DVDs, books and CDs on tape, books (of course) magazines you can check out, as well as lots of fun free programs (such as childrens story hour). I’ve got friends online who have told me that their libraries have programs where you can check out childrens toys, artwork, trade magazines and even pick up coupons.
Even better, most libraries today belong to a library system. Here in the area of New York I am in it is the “Four County Library System“. The great thing about this is that when I go online to search the card catalog, I can look at the card catalogs of all 42 member libraries, and I can request a book, audio tape or video/dvd from any one of them. I just use my library card number to reserve it, and when the book is available they ship it for free to my local library, who gives me a phone call telling me it is ready for pickup. My library card is also good at any of the libraries, so if I’m in another member town I can just pop in to their library, browse to my hearts content, take out books, videos and audio tapes, and when I am done I can RETURN THEM TO MY HOME LIBRARY!!
How cool is that? I have got to say that this must be one of the best uses of my tax dollars 🙂 I know various other libraries throughout the country have similar systems. The library I used in Colonial Heights VA not only had as good a video selection as the local video store (they bought all the new releases in multiple copies!) but if you requested a book and they didn’t have it, and they couldn’t get it from another library in their system (in their system you just typed in the name of the book and author-you couldn’t see if they had it or not) they would go out and BUY THE BOOK. Wow.
So if it has been a while, I suggest that you go take a little trip down to your local library. Ask them how their inter library loan program works, find out what interesting services and programs they have. It is amazing this wonderful resource for education and entertainment that we have available to us for free.
Oh, and while you are their check out some books on frugality and saving money.
Deart Jenn:
Not only were you a great reader, but you have always been an even greater writer.
Love, Dad.
I can’t believe how much they have updated Bangor Public Library!! The children’s wing is totally new! …and what’s with a 3rd floor? I remember always wanting to go up to the third floor (which was closed to the public) I always imagined that it had glass floors b/c the ceiling on the “2nd” floor had those glass blocks as a ceiling.
Remember the old fashioned dollhouse they used to have in the kids wing? I used to love that!
Enjoying your weblog.
I’m a Canadian a former Toronto Public Library employee so I understand your love of libraries.
In Toronto, we have the same system as in your area – the cool thing is, since amalgamation we now have 96 libraries in our system! Too bad our government cut funding to the library programs. But at least we still have access to the books, CDs and DVDs.
In T.O (as we locals call Toronto, Ontario) we also have some really cool libraries that are part of museums and foundations. My personal favourite is the Japan Foundation Toronto library.
I look forward to reading more of your blog.