This week is National Library week, and we’ll be looking at libraries over the course of the week. Over the past couple of months, as the nation focuses on national and local budgets, the role of the library in the community have received more attention from all sides, and in my mind, have continued to validate their existence as a community anchor point.
Libraries have been important to me throughout my life. Some of my earliest memories are centered around play group and story times at the Brown Public Library in Northfield, where my mother took me when I was little. When I entered middle and high school, Harwood Union High School became the place where I hung out the most, working off and on as a page, or checking in and out books when the librarians were busy. Instead of a locker, I stashed stuff behind the circulation desk, and often convinced the librarians to enable my growing reading habit by ordering me books from a new website, Amazon.com. At the same time, I worked as a page at Brown Public Library, where I learned all about circulation, returning books and so forth. Libraries have been a familiar world, and while I’ve yet to work in a library since high school, I’ve attempted to frequent them as much as I can, either at the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier, or the Kreitzberg Library at Norwich University, as I work on various historical projects or look for a quiet place to work and read.
Libraries are on the verge of great changes, and I’ve been fortunate to see some of the early changes when it comes to distance learning and books in an electronic age. Libraries were important before not only because of their books, but because of their ability to provide access to information for any citizen of the republic to better themselves and to seek out some better understanding of the world around them, either through the insights available through a novel to a non-fiction work. That access will continue to change, but I firmly believe that the role that a library will play in the community will grow beyond town and organization lines, and that the time to support libraries is now, rather than shrink back along with town budgets.
Libraries are more than walls, more than shelves of books and computers: they are the heart of our communities: we need to recognize and support these, in order to properly support the health and well being of our own existence. It’s more than ever important in this day and age.
Geek Mountain State 