I just recently went over to get a library card in my new town.
The library is light and airy, has a little cafe, a whole big kids section, meeting rooms, a really large magazine section, and all sorts of nooks and crannies for reading, working, or gathering. Oh, and books. Lots of books.
And it’s free.
In a library you can read books that are banned by your school system.
In a library, there are people who not just paid to help you, but love to help you find authors, articles, genres, or styles of writers and writings. Librarians are amazing.
In a library, you can read ALL DAY with no-one pestering you.
When you are having a hard time paying bills, the library has AC and heating and the internet.
Library membership requires no particular education, money, job, credit score, political affiliation, or status.
You will always find something to spark your imagination in a library.
In a library, you can often get help with your taxes.
In my library, there is even a ‘seed library’ - you can take seeds, and replace them with some that you’ve saved from your garden.
Your skin color doesn’t matter in a library.
In a library, you can discover new voices, new ways of viewing the world, new places.
More and more libraries are designing spaces for art, creation, and collaboration, and for community engagement.
However old you are, you can learn whatever you like in a library, without anyone telling you what you ‘should’ know, and who you ‘should’ read.
A library can transform individuals and communities.
Join your library.
Did I mention it’s free?
This is beautiful, Anne. It’s so easy for us to take libraries for granted... When my mother was growing up poor in the hot, dry, Georgia summers, libraries were her refuge. Not only did they provide air conditioning- something new in her world and unknown in her neighborhood - they also introduced her to new worlds she never knew existed.
It was in her tiny public library that she first began to see pictures of and read about people who lived very different lives. It was there that she began to dream about and want more for herself.
To this day, she credits libraries with changing her life, and teaching her to build something better for herself - which she, and my father, did.
Thank you for shining a light on this beautiful example of a public/private partnership that serves us all so well.