Every city with more than one library in it has a “good” library and the “other” library. If you grew up in a town too small for multiple libraries, there was almost certainly an adjoining township (or recently incorporated community, or burgh, or hamlet) with a good library that put your visiting bookmobile to shame. Whether you lived closer to the good library or the lesser branch affects your development for the rest of your life.
The good library had multiple floors, sometimes as many as three or four, and as often as not, an elevator. An elevator in a library!
The branch library had a carousel of paperbacks, all of which you have already read, for a kids’ section.
The good library was the place you first read something you weren’t supposed to, and the underside of your skin went cold and hot and cold again after you did it.
The branch library was less than a mile away from your house, which means that after you turned ten your mom let you walk there with a suitcase by yourself. By then you had read most of the books at the branch library, so you checked them out again.
The good library had a grassy area in front of the main entrance. The good library had a main entrance, and sometimes a fountain.
At the good library, you could spread out with as many books as you liked because all of the tables on the second floor were empty. Sarah Chladek never told you that your house smelled weird at the good library in front of everyone. You didn’t know what her house smelled like because you’d never been invited there, so you didn’t have much of a basis for comparison.
You had to wait to go to the good library, because your mom had to drive you there. And for your mom to drive you there, she had to be home from work and she couldn’t be too tired and she couldn’t be doing something else. At the good library the librarian would print a receipt of all the books you’d checked out for you, so you wouldn’t forget to bring any of them back.
The good library was an excellent place to feel rich, because you could accumulate everything you wanted without limit or exception. Unless they had a limit on how many books you could check out at a time. But still. It was close.
A final word from our own Nicole Cliffe:
Tags: books, feeling rich, libraries
My county library (one location, holla) was the “good” library. My school library was the one that I read every book out of… I read every Nancy Drew book three times. Also, most of the books were from the 1950s.
The worst library day was the day that the librarian confiscated half of my stack at check-out because “you’re too young for these.” I didn’t have time to get more books before we all had to pile into the car and leave, which meant I’d run out of fresh books half-way through the week, which mean DESPAIR AND LOSS AND GRIEVING and also having to play outside.
On the way out to the parking lot, I noticed a man sitting forlornly on the curb of the busy street, a beat-up folding cart half-full of newspaper and cans beside him. That was the day I learned the word “homeless,” and something about that confluence of events made me aware even as a child that resources are made available in different ways to different populations, and that as sad as I was about the appropriation of my beloved books, I was still extremely fortunate. I didn’t learn the word “privileged” that day, but if I had, I would have understood it — just the barest glimmer of middle-class white-kid understanding — for the first time.
The best library day was a week later, when Mom came up to the desk with me to tell the librarians in her special slightly-scary voice that they were never to deny me a book because of my age, nor to scold me for browsing the grown-up shelves, nor to say I was “too young” to understand anything, and then she stood there with me while the librarian made a note to that effect.
It’s also the day I learned to use a special slightly-scary voice with conviction, and the day that I understood how powerful my mother could be, not only to kids but to other adults who seemed to be in charge. It was an instructive day.
I love this so much!!! I’m very sorry the librarian did that to you, but I’m glad your mom put it right.
In the librarian’s defense, I was 7 or 8 and one of the books was about Vlad the Impaler. (I went through a Vlad the Impaler phase which lasted until, um, right now.)
But yes, I am suddenly compiling a mental list of Mom’s Bad Ass Acts.
My mother was essentially raised to be Betty Draper: be pretty enough to be decorative, be knowledgeable enough to be scintillating company, and resign yourself to using those talents raising children and supporting your husband. Somewhere along the way, she taught herself to also be a whip-smart, steel-voiced bad-ass, which — in retrospective — is just staggeringly impressive.
My mother-in-law marched into my now-husband’s high-school and told them in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t force him to play sports (because he was at school to get an education). My mum just wrote me notes saying I had cramps 😉
This sounds like my mom. She had so many fights with school teachers. I really loved school and had outstanding grades, but they would still do things like – for example – we used folders as privacy screens during tests, and once in 2nd grade, during a spelling test, I forgot to take the (MATH!) sheets out of my folder that was standing up in front of me. My teacher yelled at me in front of the whole class, and of course I wasn’t a kid that was accustomed to being yelled at. And as if I would cheat! My mom had a lot to say to her and the principal.
I will read any and all stories about your mom, she sounds fantastic. Keep ’em comin’.
She was/continues to be… “complicated” would be a kind way to put it.
But these days I try to observe the bad-assery and the kindness as the virtues they are, and to learn my own life lessons from the, um, other stuff, of which there is plenty.
One thousand thumbs-up to your mom, and a few to my tweenhood library for putting in a self-check-out machine.
I always hated the self-check-out…
… until my then-partner dumped me, much to the chagrin of his mother, who (duh duh DUH) worked the check-out desk at my university library and ALWAYS wanted to tell me what a mistake he’d made. [He did not make a mistake.] Lady, I am just trying to get my primary sources. Please do not make me smile consolingly/cry/fulminate.
My grandmother had to work out a special arrangement with the local library of my dad’s hometown when Dad was about… ten or so, because he read every book in the children’s section but they refused to let him take out adult books.
Well, okay, that made me cry. Libraries! Parents with slightly-scary voices! Reading stuff that’s too old for me! Sniff.
I love this! I had the opposite experience. My mom thought the Baby-Sitters Club books were too old for me when I was 8, so I had to rely on the school library to get them.
:: twitch ::
Hi. Librarian here.
1. That probably wasn’t a librarian. Libraries usually don’t work circ (unless it was a REALLY small town library). Also librarians usually aren’t censorious creeps. That clerk should have had her butt kicked by her boss for that.
2. American and Canadian parents, if a librarian ever does this to your kid, they are in violation of our profession’s code of ethics (http://www.ala.org/advocacy/proethics/codeofethics/codeethics – Article II or Article VII, depending on how you want to slice it) and the Library Bill of Rights (http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill – Article V, without a doubt). Do point it out – loudly, if necessary.
I lived in a tiny english village which had precisely one shelf for the ‘youth’ section and only a small room for the rest. My parents gave me a letter to give to the librarians to get adult books out, and the librarians started ordering me books in on spec every week once they’d learned my tastes.
I was also allowed to take stuff out of the middle-and-high school library from the age of seven when it was realised the tiny primary school library couldn’t possibly service me.
There was a particular series where I was the only one to EVER take it out so they sold it to me at the end of the year.
I once read “Go Ask Alice” at the bad library because it was the last book at the bad library to read. I was volunteering for the summer, and the librarian told me I probably shouldn’t read it. I did anyway.
The good library was by my dad’s office, and I only got to go when he picked me up from the orthodontist, which meant I really couldn’t enjoy it that much because my whole mouth hurt.
I suppose the good library was the one across the river, but I was and am deeply fond of my hometown library. Which had AT LEAST three carousels of paperbacks for tweens and teens, thank you. One of my earliest memories is walking from the car repair place to the library with my mom, and eating egg salad sandwiches on the front lawn, and then going to story time (it was Wombat Stew that day). Even as an older teen with a car I rarely went to the good library. I didn’t want to hurt my library’s feelings, because it really was a good little library, definitely full of things I wasn’t supposed to read.
(shockingly, I grew up to be a librarian)
Martha’s Vineyard had (has) one library per town and in the winter there wasn’t much inter-island public transportation, so if I wanted a book from one of the other libraries, I had to ask for it through interlibrary loan, because my mother certainly was not driving me to Oak Bluffs just for a book. If the book was not on the island, there was a way to see if the Cape libraries had it, but that took a week or more. If you needed it for a report due that week? You were screwed.
I spent as much time in the Edgartown Public Library as I did at home. Once a week I would sit in the periodicals room and read every magazine that had come out that week, from Popular Psychology to Sports Illustrated. Whenever I got obsessed with something, I’d work through all the books and back issues featuring it. I may have been the only kid in Edgartown allowed in the magazine storage room without supervision.
All the librarians knew me by name. They would tell me when late-fee amnesty was coming up when I owed, like, $30 on a book. I went back a few years ago with my nephew and was shocked to realize how small the library actually was. I remembered it as magnitudes bigger than it actually is.
My current city has late-fee amnesty for kids. I had never heard of it before this. I think it’s a wonderful idea.
I still get irritated at my current local library because it’s not like the library I grew up with, which was definitely the “good” library. All libraries should look like fieldstone farm houses and have wide wooden banisters and comforting tall wooden bookshelves in the Grades 4+ room!
My library has always been the good library. First it was main with it’s black stone steps to the second floor, where when I was six my dad lifted me up by the waist so I could sign my first library card on top of the book drop. And then it changed about three years ago when the branch was built and opened about two miles from my house and it was new and I learned that you could pick up your holds at a drive-through.
Now I am five days into a job at the academic library for the University in my hometown. This is the best library.
Oh my god, the library by the Cataraqui Town Center!!! Having it be mentioned here just made my week! So well air conditioned. This is were I discovered Star Wars EU books, which is probably the reason I remained a virgin long into adulthood.
I was just coming down here to say, OH MY GOD. I live far enough away that a trip to Cataraqui is “going to the big town” and I have suffered through my share of substandard libraries in small Canadian towns.
Once the library where I wanted to go was closed for renovations for the day or something, and it was a really weirdly-placed library on top of things, so I shivered in my car while I Googled the other locations of the library in town. One was the French-language branch, and the other one was on the other side of town, and I drove there and it turned out to be part public library, part MIDDLE SCHOOL LIBRARY. It was half older people on the computers and reading the newspaper, and half sixth-grade kids passing notes. I felt like such a creeper and left right away.
Libraries are the best. I remember going to the library to look in BOOKS for information for schoolwork. (This was how we learned things before Google existed).
I also read all the VC Andrews at my dad’s town library, because I knew my mum would not approve of it. Sometimes my dad’s hands off approach did not work out, like the time I ended up reading a really upsetting book about a man who genetically engineers a smart gorilla and then falls in love and has sex with her.
also have to wait until the BBs main reaction to books is more like reading or at least looking rather than chewing/ripping/drawing on before I feel comfortable taking them to our local library, which is within walking distance but not open on Saturdays. I ask you.
Whaaaa? I thought all libraries were open on Saturdays!
Me too! I’ve encountered some that are closed on Sundays, which seems strange enough, but Saturday? Isn’t that, like, prime library-visiting day?
When a library gets a budget cut, weekend hours are usually the first thing to go. Also, the staff that works them.
GOOD THING WE HAVE VC ANDREWS DAY COMING SOON
OMG OMG REALLY?!?!?!?
I have succumbed to peer pressure from, I swear to god, every woman within 5 years of my age that I know and have begun reading Flowers in the Attic. I think I missed a crucial window, though, probably 25 years ago, because it’s… not good. Not even really in a bad/good way.
My current library is technically the “other” library, because it is a branch library and small, but I particularly treasure it because it is an old Carnegie library and so pretty! Also it is on my walk home from work and thus immensely convenient, and because of my inordinately long to-read list and use of the hold feature, I rarely have to browse the small selection on the shelves. I just stroll in to the hold bookshelf to find my latest request and sigh contentedly at my surroundings.
Are you in Pittsburgh!? The old Carnegie libraries are so gorgeous. Toast-Up at the Oakland branch?
Oh my goodness! I just moved to Pittsburgh a few months ago, and would totally be up for a Toast – Up. There is even a cafe called Toast near my apartment!
No, I’m in Santa Monica, but it’s lovely to know there are other Carnegie libraries still in use! The one in my hometown was turned into a museum instead.
My library was small, and the only one in our town, but it was the little library that could. I went to every activity they offered for the first 14 years of my life, then worked there for the next 7. It’s still the best library to me. We had no carousels, and constantly revamped our collections so that everyone would have new choices.
The two “good” libraries in the towns over did have multiple floors, and my mom did have to drive me, but only if she wasn’t tired, how did you know? It was so much fun to explore because I didn’t already know every inch of them, like I did with my library. But our librarians were always and still are the friendliest. I miss my library now that I live multiple states away, but it’s okay because I follow their active Facebook.
I am very sad for people who had read all of the books in their library and then run out of options (although I did this at my school library as well). When I worked there, we had younger children who would come in and take out gigantic stacks (like is described in the story, and like all the other commenters say, and like I did). I loved watching them, because they were so much like me! But the difference was, they were allowed to make ILL requests – so they had so many options!! We’d get huge stacks in for them every week, and they devoured them.
I can’t wait to work in a library again.
Side note, How does one get to work in a library without being a qualified librarian? Is it possible or do you always have to have done some kind of education?
Well, I have a lot of answers for you, but I’ll try to keep them concise:
1. To note what I said above, I started working there when I was 14 – so I was putting books away, etc. I worked up to other tasks, but this was because I was there 7 years and still being paid min wage (well, plus raises) and oh right, everyone there knew me since I was born. So that’s one way: be a teenager and do grunt work.
2. I have also worked in a library when I was a bit older, as a “nights and weekends” circulation & light reference – always with the caveat “oh, I’m not a reference librarian, but I can show you where that is, or you can come back xyz hours.” Again: I was part-time & hourly.
3. A lot of urban and rural libraries, due to lack of funding, will hire non-professional persons to be librarians on a part-time basis – especially on off-business hours.
4. All libraries hire some people to work the circ desk and do admin who are not trained.
5. Actually, even if you do have the qualifications, it can be pretty rough. So there’s that.
Thanks! I appreciate the info 🙂
Yes, it is possible–there are professional (“librarian”) and paraprofessional (“technician,” “library assistant,” etc.) positions. Some smaller libraries are entirely staffed by non-MLS people. In a large library, the people who check out and reshelve your books are probably paraprofessionals, as well as some of the people doing other jobs. Previous experience helps a lot, even if it’s just as a volunteer. However, the job pickings for librarians are pretty slim right now, and some are taking paraprofessional positions to stay in the field/to stay employed.
*sigh* 🙁
Hmmm, it’s weird. I LOVE libraries, and my middle school and college libraries were really great. That said, I’m a book buyer and not a book borrower. I go to the sales libraries have to raise money and get rid of old books. I always hated returning books that I really enjoyed. I wanted to keep them, stash them in my horde. And I will go all dragon on you if you hurt one of my books.
Aww, I have such fond memories of my childhood library, which I guess was the good one as the only one in town. They’d renovated a portion of the adult section, but the rest, including the kids’ section, was old and kinda spooky. The upper levels were always near-deserted and I remember sitting up there in the rare books section (or something – you couldn’t check them out for some reason) and devouring a musty old book about the Bell Witch of Tennessee and being ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED that she was about to pop out from the stacks. Still my all-time favorite scary story, as my username attests.
I still have my library card with my signature in 5- or 6-year-old handwriting from that library. I love that library cards last forever and I could go there and check books out with it to this day.
I still have my very first library card somewhere, too! I haven’t used it in twenty years but if for some reason I had it in my possession and happened to be passing through that town again, I could use it. Amazing.
Also, amazing comment + username.
You are reminding me that during a certain period of tween pseudo-psychopathy, I began taking out library cards under assumed names because I had run up what seemed at the time to be unsurmountable fines. I’m sorry, Woods Memorial Branch of the Tucson Public Library, but I really needed that Linda Goodman Love Signs book.
Please do not hate me for having it all, but my five-year-old son and I live about six blocks from a great big, kid-centric branch library, which is across the street from a park, which is next to a fire station.
AAAAAAH SO HAPPY FOR YOUR KID! It could only be better if it were in a fire station. And run by a dalmatian.
That sounds like a dream.
In my childhood summers, THIS was our library. It was quite small and cramped and had pretty strict lending rules for non-permanent residents, but who cares? IT’S A CASTLE A REAL CASTLE OH WOW A CASTLE.
That is SO cool!
My library was the main county one, which was (and still is) an enormous, dirty, run-down, kinda smelly paradise of books. I got my first library card when I could barely write my own name. My mom used to take me every Saturday, where I’d get up to the limit (10 at a time maybe? I think she might’ve gotten them to increase my limit) and read them all, every week.
I always wanted to grow up and work in a library, although I never did. I still love going to libraries though. And now they have kindle books too, so sometimes I don’t even have to wait as long as the bus ride to start reading something!
“By then you had read most of the books at the branch library, so you checked them out again.”
Ugh, yes. This was the reason I read “The Face on the Milk Carton” about 5 times in the 6th grade. Our Young Adult Fiction section was one small shelf (not bookcase, a single shelf) in the corner full of battered, yellowed paperbacks. I read the entire section. Then I stopped reading for fun until the summer before my junior year of college.
I read that book! Just re-checked in out in e-book form. Wow that author wrote a lot of things I’ve never heard of.
The little library nearest our house is still one of my favorites even though ti isn’t the “good” library. I have happy memories of carpet-square storytimes and using the microfiche (it was there untl like 1998). It’s cozy and wonderful and I read pretty much everything in it.
The central library is the “good” library but it’s donwtown and didn’t open until I was 11. It has entire floor for children’s and YA. I read through a good chunk of that library too but it’s not as cozy and homey as ‘my’ library.
My college library was the best. It was 4 stories and very quiet and had very old wonderful books (too old maybe). I used to hide on the 3rd floor in the PNs all the time. I am a librarian at an art college now.
My school library was the best library, because my dad is the librarian so I got first/unlimited access to all the books. (I think this was the only aspect of my life he regularly played favorites in.)
My town library growing up was actually pretty good considering how small of a town it was. It was only two floors but it was chock full of great stuff (adults upstairs, kids and periodicals downstairs). They even had art sculptures that you could check out! A few years after I moved out of town, they bought the bank next door and expanded. One time I went to the county library for research on a paper only to find that it was only one small room, not much bigger than my grade school’s library.
I currently live a mere block away from the library where I live now. It’s not very big but it’s not small either. And the county libraries here are HUGE, so with ILL I’ve got basically everything.
My main library was housed in a strip mall, a ten minute walk from my elementary school. It opened the summer before grade two, and the day we took a field trip to get our library cards (yellow, with our names written in emerald ink) was probably the best day of my life. They had a 30 book limit, every two weeks, and I always maxed it out — then forgot to return them, and maxed out my late fees too. It was where I read Pierce and every ghost story and Canadian YA novel ever. It was the best.
The best library is also the main arts library at my university, which has an old part and a new part and several storeys. I’ve spent uncountable hours there in the past five years. The old part has a massive old study room which is colloquially referred to as the “Harry Potter Room” due to its resemblance to the Great Hall in the movies, a special collections library in the basement (which also looks like it was pulled straight out of Harry Potter, and which is full of fantastic things and people), and the School of Library and Information Studies, where I’ll be starting in a few weeks.
My library was the shitty library, but I did not know it was the shitty library UNTIL YOU JUST TOLD ME. Guys, I think you just retroactively ruined my childhood.
When I was a kid, my siblings and I would basically beg for “reading nights” – we’d come home from a few hours at the library with all our books (as many as we wanted; the only rule was “don’t lose them”), and we’d all sit at the dining room table to eat, but we’d read instead of talking. It was awesome.
Also, we had 3 libraries that we went to, in 3 different towns. Our town’s library was my least favorite, although I think I would appreciate it more now. It was in an old Victorian that smelled odd – not like ink and paper, but like the sun never came in – and the floors creaked in a way that made me feel uncomfortable about disturbing the silence a library required. But it had a giant stuffed bear whose lap you could sit in to read.
My middle favorite library had gerbils to play with and a giant raised playpen with squashy pillows, but I never seemed to be able to find what I wanted and the pillows weren’t as accommodating as they looked.
My favorite library was in the town where my parents and sister had lived until she was 1; right next to their old house, actually, and it was the site of a story my father wrote about how my sister had saved the library from a dragon who escaped one of her books. The children’s librarian knew us all by name, and I was an expert at navigating the YA and grown-up sections. There was a used book room where my mom would usually end up; it was down a stairwell with vaguely sinister lighting made up for by the pleasing acoustics.
“…but we’d read instead of talking.” This is my ideal night.
My family has “reading dinners.” And “reading lunches” and “reading breakfasts.” I love it.
My library was a little building that smelled like musty books. The librarian knew all of our names and we had a three-digit library card number. It wasn’t in walking distance, though, so it was a special trip when we went every couple weeks.
I suppose the good library was in the next town over, but when I was ~10 there was a big hubbub between the two towns about residency policies, and my mom held a grudge and refused to patronize it for years.
Now I live a quarter mile from the central library in my town and it is the best.
My library was the branch library, but they’d ship books from the main library for free if you ordered them on the catalog, so that didn’t really constrain my reading. Now my library is technically the “good” library, since the nearest better one is 3 hours away, but it’s pretty lacking in anything other than books about First Nations studies (which are good, but sometimes you want something else).
LIBRARIES, YAY! Library ages 1-12: Suburban NY. Must’ve been a branch library, because I recall it being on the wee side but I didn’t care because it was MY library, you know? It had all the YA I could want and kept all of my free time (and some not-free time when I would try to be sneaky and read SVH books at my desk in school) full of Sweet Valley High (and SV Kids and University), Baby Sitters Club, Nancy Drew, everything by R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike and all the classics of the 70’s and 80’s that I now can’t remember the names of (but can picture all the covers).
We moved to Georgia when I was 12 and I was bitterly unhappy to leave “my” library and the new town’s library was pretty crummy and had a shit YA section. In retrospect this was good for me, since it forced me to leave behind all the kid stuff in favor of Clan of the Cave Bear and Anne Rice and Danielle Steele and then I found the adult horror section and it was ON.
At some point shortly after the move I stumbled upon VC Andrews and though I’m sure my first encounter was at the library, I remember buying most of those books at the grocery store (which sold them, for some reason). As strict as my folks were about some stuff, thank god they could never be arsed to screen my reading material for appropriateness.
Today, shamefully, I live in a city with a HUGE main library and many neighborhood branch libraries and my nearest branch is only like 4 blocks from my house but I never go. Young Jinx would be so unhappy with Current Jinx, but it takes me so long to get through (most) books these days that it makes sense to just buy them rather than having to renew 3 times and/or incur $10 in late fees.
*Though I’ll give them props for the sweet redo they did a few years ago. It’s huge now, has a nice lounge area with a damn FIREPLACE, good selection. Of course, I’d long since moved away by the time this happened, but I’m happy to know some awkward 13-year-old has a nice home away from home.
My library was a great library, except that it was closed on Sundays in the summer, a fact which I often forgot until I had walked the mile there.
Running out of books was never a problem, because I was a master of the interlibrary loan system. How else was I going indulge my morbid curiosity and read every single book in the Upper Hudson Library System on Multiple Personality Disorder and/or self mutilation? Plus one year my aunt shipped me a box of my cousin’s old books and accidentally included one her own Amelia Peabody novels. After that I realized that both the YA and Adult sections had wonderful things to read.
My library was neither the good library nor the bad library; it was the home library. My mom worked there part-time since I was three years old. I have fond memories of hanging out in the break room, devouring another Nancy Drew while waiting for my dad to get off work and pick me up for dinner.
The downside of being a librarian’s daughter is that I ALWAYS forget to return my books on time as an adult and I accrue fines regularly. I just think of it as supporting the library.
Yup, librarians are known for being the worst library patrons. I started early–as a tween volunteer at my local library, I racked up fines in the $20-$30 range more than once. Oops. But 10c/book accrues fast when you have 20 books checked out!
The “good library” was the central branch downtown and it did have an elevator, but you had to park on the street so we didn’t go there much because my mom didn’t feel like hunting for a meter. The branch nearest our house was teeny but I loved it because it was only about five minutes away so I could get my parents to take me there to pick up my holds from the other library branches. Then there was a branch near the dance studio I went to that was also tiny, but I’d go to when I needed a specific Sweet Valley Twins book. Then they had a flood and it got all moldy smelling and we stopped going there. After the flood we started going to the big branch about 20 minutes away that wasn’t as big as the central library but did have easy parking.
I’ve had a library card in my current city for about a year (before that I just used the university library) and I’m still in the process of figuring out what the good library is. Of course, none of them will ever be as good as the home library because they charge you a dollar per hold! I know they need money, but that is some bullshit. If I’m going to be paying money to read a book, I want to own the book after. (Yeah, I know I can’t buy most books for a dollar but for some reason I’m hung up on the matter.)
That dollar-per-hold system is crazy! Way to discourage reading.
My town had the best library. They had a HUGE section on paranormal and occult subjects. There was a cafe in the basement. They had a dollhouse displayed in the children’s section that the children’s librarian would decorate and furnish every month according to a different theme. (The front of the dollhouse had plexiglass fitted over it so you couldn’t actually play with the stuff inside, but it was always an amazing display.) Also in the children’s section was this cool place for kids to sit and read — it was a bunch of open cubes with bean bags — kind of like super-comfortable study carrels for children.
You could also check out art! They had Ben Shahn lithographs available for loan, which blew my mind when I got old enough to know who Ben Shahn was. They had microfilm machines and newspaper microfilms going back into the 1800s. The librarians would totally let you look at old microfilms just out of curiosity! They loved it when you asked to look, in fact.
Oh, this article strummed all my chords. Libraries were free babysitters for my dad and my source of comfort. My childhood library was the really good library: wide and open, modeled after cows, a third of its total square footage dedicated to shelves of children’s books, a wimpy YA section that did house, to its credit, Anne of Green Gables and every sequel and a small handful of books with female protagonists who weren’t white and maybe even Korean, and of course regular fiction and non-fiction where I discovered books wayyyyyy ahead of my years.
And then there was the small library I walked to every Wednesday afternoon because my Catholic middle school had early dismissals. Here, I discovered carousels of bodice rippers that put VC Andrews to shame. I’d pull one out and slide my hand over the cover so the adults wouldn’t think I was depraved.
My dad’s idea of parenting was to deprive me of everything but those items necessary for academic success, but whatever, there were so many libraries and so many books that kept me sane.
Oh gosh, so many library feelings. My library was a very small baby-crap-brown brick building right off a public park, wildly underfunded and closed more often than not. Probably one of the best summers of my life was the tween summer I spent mainly at the public pool and the library just down the block, and my favorite smells are still chlorinated outdoor pools and yellowy paperbacks (and going from the cold pool showers to the wonderful dry heat to the frigid library air conditioning, hair dripping down my neck, one of my favorite sensations). I had gotten bored of the kids’ section long before and I think I checked out every romance novel and VC Andrews they had to offer (I don’t remember getting any side-eyeing from the librarians but I’m sure I did) over that summer.
I think it’s even more badly funded now, which breaks my heart, especially given that my fondness for that library is why I was a library assistant for two years. I was definitely (and am still) a problem patron, though; always late returning books, always forgetting which books I had, always losing books under my bed, so I’m sure my family offset that poor funding at least a little…
I remember that the move going from the upstairs of the library (kids section) to the downstairs (adult section) felt really significant.
If there is a post about feral children, I would read it like woah. Please let there be a post about feral children!
So many people working in libraries! I have a library degree but I work in a non-traditional field, and this is making me wish I had a bonafide library job instead.
I also wish that I could recapture that sense of wonder and limitless possibilities that I always felt when entering libraries as a kid. As an adult they just fill me with anxiety: I want to read all the books but I know I will just rack up all the fines.
Augh, I miss having a (useful) library around so so so much. The city library near me has hours exactly when I’m working, so I can only visit once a week (before 1pm on Saturday HAHA I’M TOTALLY ALWAYS UP BEFORE THEN) and has no way to return books when the branch is closed. Which makes it nigh impossible for me to use it.
New Librarian here. I work in the “other” and it creates anger from both the patrons and my coworkers.
ohhhh myyyyy this brought back such fond memories. I lived near a good branch library, and marching over to the youth section was pretty much the highlight of my week.
then at some point I moved to a 10 min walk from the main/central library which is gigantic and very old, like… I don’t know, like the White House of libraries. marble stairs leading from floor to floor, every genre given multiple levels in its own massive room, an entire section just for ancient maps! god I love that place.