Booking Through Thursday: Library Memories

My earliest memory of going to the library was in kindergarten.  I’m sure every school still does weekly trips.  I don’t remember much about this time, but I do remember talking to other kids in our class more than looking for books.  In particular I remember one conversation taking place about Michael Jackson.  One of the Moms of the class was handing out little notepads in celebration of a birthday that week and a (much younger) MJ was featured on the cover. I was ecstatic!  Strange that my first library memory comes in a snippet and really isn’t much to do with a book.

The library didn’t really figure prominently in my life until we moved to Stockbridge (for those of you unfamiliar with the town of Stockbridge, it’s SMALL).  My Mom would take us there each week, and we’d get stacks of books- probably 15 or so per week. The following week we’d take them back.  In the summer, my sister and I didn’t do much else besides sit outside and read.  Books were more than friends- they were my life, my keys to the world, and my strongest comfort.  I grew so obsessed with reading that my family members would tell me not to read so much.  They didn’t understand it, and my cousins thought I was some sort of novelty (although maybe anomoly would be a better word here).  By the fifth grade, I had to move on to adult books because the library was so small.  

In middle school the library was a place to do my homework, but more importantly to hang out.  My friends and I would go after school and cause an untold number of headaches for the poor librarian.  I didn’t know at the time I was a pain, I was being a kid.  I got kicked out of the library a few times, but I kept coming back. It was warm and friendly and home, and I was well behaved if I was by myself.

In high school, I was a library aide, and the school library had much more to offer than the town library did.  Every day I’d check out books, and help other students find what they needed.  There was a ton of socializing, everyone came there to study or hang out, and pretty soon we were goofing off again, in between spurts of writing papers or doing our homework. This time, the librarian knew we would eventually get down to business, and as long as we weren’t disturbing others, we were free to goof around a bit.  Around this time, we started doing video announcements for school each week, and also playing “library commandos” with whoever happened to be hanging around that day.  The goal: duck, cover, throw things, and get it on tape before the whole school.  Did we succeed? Yes. Was anyone amused besides us? Probably not.

In college, the library was nice, but not a place I liked to go much. It was institutional, and I didn’t appreciate everything it offered until I received my Master’s degree and contemplated being a librarian myself.  It seemed for years to be my true calling, and I even finished a year of library school (had I known the amount of education that librarians actually had, I probably would have respected them a lot more in middle school).  After several opportunities, I continuously closed the door on this dream.  I finally realized, after a lot of soul searching, that what I really love is a good book, a good cup of coffee, and some good conversation.  I love the library for its community efforts, its focus on learning, and its supersmart leaders with a ton of vision for the future.  But I finally realized that the things that I love about most libraries I can also love at home- and that is truly where my heart lies.