Libraries

The library as an institution has been on my mind. Students attending my elementary school participate in a reading challenge each year. Two of the titles on this year’s list are about libraries: My Librarian Is A Camel by Margriet Ruurs and B is for Bookworm: A Library Alphabet by Anita C. Prieto.

We are a privileged nation on the whole. Access to books is taken for granted by most of us. But in many nations, books are a great luxury and difficult to obtain - not only financially but physically. Camels deliver books to eager readers in Bulla Iftin in Kenya; and in Omkoi of northern Thailand, elephants are the mobile library! (My Librarian Is A Camel)

Public libraries have been important in the United States even before there was a United States. In 1698 the colonists of Charleston, South Carolina passed an act “to secure the Provincial Library of Charleston” allowing townspeople to “have liberty to borrow any book out of the said Provincial Library, giving a receipt.” (B is for Bookworm)

Today is the birthday of Ray Bradbury who is a great supporter of libraries.

In 2000 Bradbury was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Literature Award by the National Book Foundation. In his acceptance speech Bradbury proclaimed:

I never made it to college. I started going to the library when I graduated from high school. I went to the library every day for three of four days a week for ten years and I graduated from the library when I was 28.

And at other events:

There is no use going to school unless your final destination is the library.

Go to the library and take the books off the shelf. You can handle them. You can turn the pages. You can't do that with a computer.

What’s not to love about this man - from a librarian’s point of view of course.

In my book . . . Libraries should be a destination of choice - even if it’s a camel! Turn those pages!