Do you remember when you got your first library card?
That was a big day for me many, many years ago. When I was a child, our library was one of those built with funding from Andrew Carnegie. It is mind boggling to think of all the lives Carnegie touched by choosing to become a philanthropist and give away 90 percent of his fortune or about $350 million to charities, foundations and universities in the last years of his life between 1901 to 1919. Can you imagine how much money $350 million dollars was in 1901? His charitable giving helped to establish some 3,000 libraries all across the United States and also in Canada, the United Kingdom, what is now the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji.
One of those libraries was in my little hometown of Lawrenceburg. And some forty years later, I was able to climb those steps into this treasure house of story and step up to the desk to get my own library card. Then I could choose books to carry home where they opened up the magic of words to this little girl. Not just once, but almost every week. What a privilege that was! What a gift Carnegie gave the country!
Our library is no longer in the Carnegie building. Some years ago a new library was built and then expanded and now expanded once more. I went to the grand reopening of the library after this last expansion project Saturday. The new library is big and spacious, full of light, and much different from the library of my childhood. In that library there were shelves of books and the light wasn’t the best. There were no computers. One librarian kept the card files and stamped your books when you checked them out. Her soft voice added to the hushed feel of this place of books.
Things changed in the new library. Large windows let in plenty of light, but still the shelves of books were the main attraction. A children’s section had places a kid could sit down and read a book. A couch and easy chairs made a friendly gathering spot in the magazine and newspaper section. Story hours were held in a meeting room. Tables with partitions were available for quiet study. You found books by opening little drawers full of small cards to locate books by title or subject. Fast forward to the computer age. The drawers of cards disappeared to be replaced by computers that could locate books by title or subject. The study tables were fitted with computers.
The cards stuffed in the card holders in the back of library books were no longer the way you kept track of who checked out what books. Last year a friend found this card in a book and sent it to me. As you can see I checked out this book twice in the seventies. I was surely doing research for one of my historical novels. And looks like I needed to read it twice.
New plastic library cards took the place of all that. With a click and a scan, the book is checked out. A slip of paper like a store receipt is stuck in the book to let you know when it’s due back. At the library you can work on a computer or play games on a computer. You can rent movies. You can find audio books. And thank goodness, you can still find books on those shelves.
Best of all, young people like my granddaughter can get a first ever library card and choose from hundreds of books to find one she wants to read. That’s what libraries are for. Reading. Community. Learning.
Andrew Carnegie may not have been thinking about this one little girl with her dreams of writing when he decided to give part of his fortune to build libraries, but then again, maybe he was thinking about all the boys and girls who needed books to make their dreams come true. And the dream continues with each new library card given.
Happy reading! What do you remember about visiting the library when you were a kid?
Comments 9
Ann,
This brings back so very many memories!
We were dirt poor, migrant workers from when I was around five til I was around nine (I had three siblings at the time that were two, three and five years younger than I). We worked, too!
We were able to check out books to read and, boy, did I read.
Dad later found a job that kept us kids from having to work, so Mom stayed home with us (we were still unbelievably poor). Those early days set up a life-long love of books (and their authors!!
We took our kids and our granddaughter to get library cards, too.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
It’s incredible that you have a card with your name on it!!! How neat!
Blessings~
Author
That’s one of the great things about libraries and our public school system too, Robbie. The books are there for rich and poor alike. Sounds like you did have a hard first years, but at the same time, it sounds as if your parents loved you and tried to make things easier for you. I’m always thankful I had loving parents and I’m glad I grew up on a farm where I was expected to do my part for the family. Not that I liked working in the crops but it did teach me responsibility.
Thanks for sharing your story and I’m so glad you still love books and those authors too. 🙂
I was number six out of eight children–we had a huge library of our own. However, occasionally we would go to the library in town and I would take out a book–which was something, almost, crazy to do. My book nearly always disappeared from where I’d left it. I’d find it on the kitchen table…or worse, in the bathroom…sometimes under someone’s bed—the thing had legs. I, of course, realized after a time that one of my sibs had picked it up and started to read it–never ever telling me first. After paying late fees and getting “the look” from the librarian, I gave up and depended on my mom to “feed my habit.” Library books, to this day, make me nervous.
Author
That’s a story to make me smile, Sandi. You always have something good to tell. I would have been up a creek without a paddle if not for the library because we didn’t have that at home library. I have plenty of books now stacked around everywhere to keep me reading for a while, but I still love libraries.
I love the library now…my youngest son (who is in his forties actually) and I go at least once a week. He is disabled and he loves to read, so it gives him something to do. And…when I take out a book, there is no one to snatch it from me. That’s, indeed, a plus, but I do miss the old days.
I got my first library card when I was in first grade because my mom worked in the Montesano Public Library. My two sisters, my brother, and I walked to the library every other day to get more books when my youngest sister was about five years old. The library was about a mile from our house so we always went together and came home with a stack of books each. And, then, we’d walk back the next day to return the books because we had read them all and needed more!
Author
That’s fun, Patricia. You not only got all that great reading, you got your exercise too. And you kids had to learn how to take care of one another. Well, you probably already knew that. I think about all the time I had to read when I was a kid, even though I had plenty of chores, and I’m so glad I had library books to fill up that reading time.
Oh, I so much loved going to the library as a child. My brother and I would take a cart every Saturday and pull it to the library and choose a whole stack of books, to be exchanged for a fresh supply the next week. I LOVED the click the check- our machine made as each card was stamped with the date! One summer our library had a special time when they would feature a book by making a diorama and you could guess the book. I remember it was Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price and the chapter about the malfunctioning doughnut machine. So fun!
Author
It was the greatest feeling to have the choice of all those books, wasn’t it, Jeanne? I too remember those clicks, but when I first went to the library, the librarian marked the books by hand with one of those adjust the dates stampers. Later they had the machines where they stuck the card in to mark it. Actually, the bottom of the card I have in the picture was used in a clicker machine. I do have to say that having a card in the back to show if you had ever checked out the book (because there was your signature) was helpful when you couldn’t remember if you’d read that book before. Plus you saw who else had read it. That would be a big invasion of privacy rules these days. I probably shouldn’t have posted the picture, but it’s been so long ago, I didn’t think the other people whose names are on the card would mind.