Monday, December 21, 2015

Support Your Local Library


Annamaria on Monday

It's nearly Christmas.  I urge you to give a gift to everyone in your community.  One they can use freely, enjoy, find extraordinarily useful.  That will inform the ignorant, entertain the bored, help the unemployed find a job, and distract those in pain.   No shopping is involved here.  All you have to do is make a donation to your local library.

One of the lions--Patience and Fortitude--that grace the Main Branch of the New York Public Library

I realize that, unlike murder, free public libraries are not everywhere.  They are pretty much everywhere in the USofA.  If they exist where you live, you owe it to yourself to follow my advice and give to your local bastion and guardian of civilization.  Libraries are the most benign places on earth.  I have gotten to experience all of the top three.

The libraries of the world line up like this. One: The Library of Congress in Washington.  Two: The British Library in London.  Three: The New York Public Library, where I have the enormous privilege of calling myself a writer in residence.  Mine is the MOST user friendly.  And open and welcoming.  Not so much, numbers one and two.

At the Library of Congress, you have to apply if you want to read, show ID, make a case for yourself.  It is not onerous, but not totally open either.

Here is the drill if you want to research at The British Library.  First, you have to go on their website, which is dense with long paragraphs of information spread over many pages.  The information is arranged in the most arcane way: like books stored by the Dewey Decimal system--according to rules understood only by licensed librarians.  If you are really determined, you will be able to find and fill out the application form.  Once you have submitted a properly completed form, you will be directed to a list of acceptable forms of identification.  You will need to present two of them when you arrive at the library.  You will also be given your personal applicant ID number.

The British Library
On the day you arrive for the first time, you will be directed to a special room, where you enter your ID number in the computer system and then wait.  Eventually applicants will be called by that ID number to be interviewed.  A very friendly, in my case, person will ask you to explain what of their collection you want to see and why.  I have no idea of the criteria they use to judge your worthiness.  All I know is that I passed muster to read in their Africa and Asia Room.  They gave me a special British Library photo ID.


If you survive the above, you go to the cloak room in the basement, where you give up all your worldly possessions except for your computer, pencils (NO PENS), and your notebook.  You put those three things, and nothing else in a clear plastic bag.  You then can take the elevator to the reading room you have designated.  There a guard will check your ID and your clear plastic bag.  Then and only then you can read a book.

I don't resent this.  It is a privilege to be able to read British Library's books, and they have a right to require whatever they want of the people they allow in.

But nothing like this happens in the NYPL or in public libraries all over the the USA.  If you want to read a book, all you have to do is ask for it.  If you want to borrow a book to take home from one of the branch libraries, you have to have a card like this.  No photo, no approved forms of ID, no expiration date.

  

I consider free public libraries sacred.  They are my temples of free knowledge.  My places of worship.

I fell in love with the library as a very young child, when my brother and I called it "The Liberry."

My Brother and Me
The Paterson (NJ) Public Library saved my life. I would have grown up somehow if I could not have read its books as a child, but I would not have grown up to be me. Even before my brother and I learned to pronounce it, we loved to go. We went at least once a week in the summer. Our mother took us to our local branch, about a twenty minute walk from home, a simple storefront filled with hundreds of books and staffed by two of the nicest ladies ever. Mommy got books for herself and my brother and I chose from the children’s section. He had a weird taste for books about snakes, guns, and tanks—a bother since we were allowed only three books at a time. When I finished reading mine, I was stuck with his questionable selections until the next trip. As long as we were still in elementary school, the rules allowed us only children’s books, but since I was voracious, there was soon nothing left for children that I hadn’t read. So as a seventh grader, the librarians allowed me to select biographies (but never fiction) from the adult section.
Paterson Public Library

During the summer, between grades seven and eight, I took to going with my friend Dolores to the main branch, a bus ride away. It was much grander than our local storefront. Here is a picture of it—a building designed by Henry Bacon, who subsequently designed the Lincoln Memorial. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was one of the most elegant places we had ever seen. Only churches and the Paterson City Hall compared with it. Even in the big library, however, we were not allowed grown-up books, except for biographies. Why the librarians thought that the lives of real people would be more edifying than those of fictional characters is beyond me now, but in those days we just took what we could get. Consequently, I read the lives of Fred Allen, William Randolph Hearst, and Lunt and Fontaine, among many others—lives of people who lived large, an idea one could hardly get a whiff of in our working class neighborhood.

Now I am privileged to do my research at the Main Branch—the Stephen Schwarzman Building—of the New York Public Library, a marble temple of knowledge that can tell you anything you want to know and will tell it to you no matter who you are.


 An Italian friend who was living here in New York was amazed when she found out how egalitarian our library is. We went together to do research one day. She is from Florence, home to one of great libraries of the world: The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. It is massive and beautiful. And like libraries everywhere has on staff some of the most devoted employees anywhere. When the floodwaters were rising in 1966, one of them, a woman, stayed until the last possible moment, moving priceless treasures from the lower floors to the upper ones. When it was too late to continue, she escaped over the rooftops, carrying Galileo’s telescope. That library is fabulous, but unlike ours, you can’t just walk in. You have to have top-notch credentials just to get through the door.

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

My friend and I walked into the Main Branch one day along with scores of others seeking all kinds of information. She wanted to know the New York City and New York State laws governing the manufacture of foods containing dairy products. I wanted a map of Paraguay in 1868. We both found what we wanted: she in the main reading room, and I in the Map Division. Where else in the world can you do that? And get the help of kind and knowledgeable people to do it efficiently. It’s amazing.

Map Division

And it is gorgeous, is it not?





Main Reading Room




Your library needs you. You may not even go there yourself, but the library deserves your support. PLEASE, give a donation to your local public library. You can probably give online in a couple of minutes. There are kids in your town who need the library, for whom it will open vistas that will change their lives.

19 comments:

  1. Thank you for this, Annamaria. Libraries are a writer's lifeblood. I'd like to suggest an alternative donation possibility - to help people who are not in rich communities. Please take a look at booksforafrica.org - a St. Paul-based charity that collects and sends books and computers to different countries in Africa. Last year they sent over 2 million, but always need cash to pay for the shipping.

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    1. Stan, I am putting Books for Africa on my Christmas list. I wish I could go on their tour this coming February. Perhaps one day I will take one.

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  2. this was a lovely piece. Thank you. Thelma Straw kin Manhattan

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    1. Thelma, Thank you. You have read many of my year-end pleas waxing rhapsodic about libraries. What's not to love? as we say in NYC.

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    2. When I was a child my great joy was in going to the local library to find a new book. tstraw

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  3. Maybe the British Library is difficult to get into because they, you know, have better books. Just kidding. I would love to do a world library tour since you have shown this to us all.

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    1. Jono, I make it my business to visit libraries. But there are MANY around the world where you literally can't get in the door without being vetted beforehand. The British Library has great exhibits and events. it's just if you want to read and study that you have to jump through the hoops. If someone ran a world library tour, I would want to take it.

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  4. I grew up in a small (3,000) town. The only "book store" was the book section in the Goodwill store, and the city library was the upper floor of City Hall, a building not more than 40-50 feet square. But I became an avid reader somewhere around 3rd-4th grade, and have slowed down only for brief and rare moments. City libraries, school libraries, but as I became a teenager more and more a book buyer (the libraries I had access to just didn't buy many of the books I REALLY wanted to read, which was mostly science fiction back then). But you're spot-on about libraries: the backbone of our civilization, and their contents the soul.

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    1. Thank you, EvKa. Sending warmest wishes to you for beautiful holidays and joy and peace in the New Year.

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  5. What a great blog, Annamaria. I'm a big fan of the libraries, so I thoroughly applaud your suggestion. And what fabulous buildings, too. Zxx

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    1. Thank you, Zoe and thanks so much for sharing and tweeting. We need to remand as many people as we can.

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    2. So, wait, let me get this straight: if people refuse to read we're going to remand them to the public library?

      I guess that makes sense. Better than remanding them to prison, I suppose...

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  6. Thank you, sis, for reminding us all of the importance of libraries. Yes, libraries have played a significant role in my life. In fact, I grew up in the hometown of that fellow whose name I’d venture to guess is first that comes to mind to many when they hear the word, “library.”

    I still remember the day my parents allowed me the solo adventure of heading off to obtain my first library card at our nearest Carnegie Library branch. Had to take two streetcars and walk a few blocks to get there through a neighborhood a bit tougher than even the one I grew up in. But they let me to do it on my own. It was a big day in many ways.

    Libraries are far more than just a place of books. Not that they ever were just that, but certainly they are now. Today, you are on the front lines of your communities’ battles, confronting every day the sorts of things most of us think of as governmental responsibilities. Truth is, libraries are quasi-governmental agencies that all so often have a far more direct and immediate effect on a community than officially designated parts of government. Libraries rank up there with hospitals and schools as the measure of a community’s strength.

    Happy Holidays!

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    1. My brother, how true that in the US libraries are often called on to provide services that in other countries are provided by the government--helping the unemployed find jobs, giving children a place to go between school and when their parents come him from work, sheltering the homeless--at lease during opening hours. All the more reason to give generously to them.

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  7. Yes, we need an Ode to Libraries! Wonderful childhood memories of libraries and how they fostered my love of books.
    Got my first library card at the age of 3 in the West Village, was the youngest cardholder at that branch.
    Went to the library in Chicago where we lived then and switched to NYC libraries when we returned. Once a week, my father and I would return our armloads of books and take out more. My high school days were often filled with reading in my room next to the window, with a huge oak tree's leaves tipping against it.
    I used to visit different branches in my cities. But now with the revamped system, there is no point. Most books are gotten via the reserve system; one picks them up at the nearest branch when they come in.
    But how important are libraries to children. When budget cuts hit libraries here, the first to go were in the poorest communities! How awful for those children and adults.
    I believe there are towns in New Jersey where the libraries were closed! A criminal act in my mind!
    Support libraries. A cornerstone of a literate, educated and enlightened society.
    Happy holidays and a great new year!

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    1. I knew you would back me up with this one, Kathy. Many holiday good wishes to you.

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  8. Oh, and we need an Ode to Librarians, too. Important people in our young lives, and older ones, too.

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  9. I really liked your blog and the accompanying comments. When I was four yeas old, I lived in Manhattan and every week, My Mom and I would walk to the library and take out books. I date my bookaholia to that time. Because I was already reading, they let me have my own card, and I could take out 10 books. Oh the joy and excitement. Since I have lived in many different places. Other than doctors for my babies, the first thing I would seek out is the Library. It is still some seventy years later a place of joy for me, a place of anticipation of all those books.

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    1. Yes, Lil, that was how we learned to love books. Book loving--the passion that doesn't fade and and will never break our hearts.

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