I haven't blogged about libraries yet because it's a topic so near and dear to my heart that it's hard to keep it short and manageable. And, sniff, I'm still smarting from a hurtful blow that happened nearly a year ago.For reasons not quite clear to me (except that it had nothing to do with me), I was moved from the library where I worked for the past 13 years -- a library I'd rescued from something akin to a coma and nurtured back to health -- to a library in a different school with an automated card catalog but, alas, hardly any books. A lot of people said, "Well, that's nice. You'll be out of that basement. You'll finally have an automated catalog instead of those cards." People who don't understand libraries didn't get it. The computers aren't what makes a library wonderful and special. It's the collection -- the books. Books and literature are the reason I went into library work and over the years I'd built up one great collection. No bragging, just fact. I read book reviews and a wide variety of professional journals to cull out the cream of what was published each year. A lot of those books -- like Ted Hughes's book, The Iron Giant, or Barbara Cohen's book, The Carp in the Bathtub -- are out of print now and can't be easily or inexpensively replaced.
The library they put me in has a lot of junk -- every Goosebumps book, every Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew etc. but few books of real substance. No books on the Civil War and few of the award winning books. Not even a thesaurus. Certainly no Iron Giant. I've nicknamed the collection "Series Are Us". The previous tenant was more obsessed with computers than books and so, sadly, this is her legacy to me and the children of the school where I now work.
Anyhow, above is a photo of my old library that I took before I left on my last day and took my plants with me. Yeah, I know it was in the basement and had those ugly pipes running through it (it was an 85 year old school) but I loved that collection! And that library was bigger than it appears in this picture.
So, now I'm sort of starting all over again. The PTA donated over $3,000. to help rebuild the collection. It was very generous of them but I'm afraid it's going to take many years as well as thousands of dollars to bring it up to snuff. Still, hope springs eternal. And it is spring, right?
