Ode to Libraries

Storm Reyes. Lived in Native American migrant worker camps. Her parents were alcoholics and she was beaten, abused, and neglected. She learned to fight with a knife long before she learned how to ride a bicycle. When you are grinding day after day after day, there's nothing to aspire except feeding your hungry belly. You don't dream. You don't hope. One day her life changed. A bookmobile came to her migrant camp. The bookmobile staffer asked Storm what she was interested in and sent her home with a couple of books. she took them home and devoured them. She didn't just read them,  she devoured them. And she came back in two weeks and had more questions. And he gave her more books, and that started it. The experience, she says, was life-changing. That taught her that hope was not just a word. And it gave her the courage to leave the camps. That's where the books made the difference. She left the camps when she was a teenager and attended night school. She ended up working in a Pierce County Library System for more than 30 years.

For more than 100 years public libraries in this country have provided all members of the public with free access to knowledge, information, and opportunity. Public libraries have evened the playing field for all. Our own Kingsport public library was started by five women in 1919 when they formed the Kingsport Book Club.In 1921 this group approached the city of Kingsport to open a library with their collection of 400 books.The City was not interested in their proposal. That did not dampen their spirit.They ran the library in multiple different locations until City agreed to take over in 1928. In 1961, the library is moved to its current location.

Now the billion dollar question is in this digital age where all the information are in our fingertips, do we still need libraries? Entire books are downloaded in minutes. Classics from Moby-Dick to Shakespeare's tragedies come virtually free. Forget about the information coming in word from. Videos now can explain everything from plumbing work to website design.So, let's ask: Do we still need public libraries, with their miles of dusty bookshelves, decimated reference departments, and rules of decorum? Yes. 

We still need to read, study, and communicate in a non-distracting environment. And we still need what urban technologists call "third places"-that is public spaces other than home.

Human need to mingle and socially interact with others to remain strong in a community. What can be better place than library. No wonder why Starbucks is so crowded in every nook and corners or urban places.

Libraries are haven for thinking, dreaming, studying, striving and - for many children and the elderly-simply for staying safe out of the scorching heat.

Like good librarian, Tony Marx of the New York Public Library has some answers. He said "Public libraries are more important today than ever before. Their mission is still the same-to provide free access to information to all people. The way people access information has changed, but they still need information to succeed, and libraries are providing that."

Rightly so. We have an obligation to support libraries.If you don't value libraries then you don't value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.


Reference:
1. Callings: the purpose and passion of work
2. The journal of David Thoreau, 1837-1861
3. realclearpolitics.com
4. Neil Gaiman in a beautiful piece titled “Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming.”
5. npr.org