In Praise of the Public Library

When our fifth baby arrived moving became imperative, but finding a new home was challenging. Our needs plugged into the real estate search engine produced twelve listings. The variety of communities where those homes were located was stunning. There was no cluster effect, we saw homes in every part of our city and it's suburbs. The search for a home broadened from a search for a certain number of bedrooms and square footage into a search for a place where we could belong. Some communities offered terrific parks, others excellent shopping, the best were awash with natural beauty, beautifully managed, but I fell in love with our community when I saw--the library.

Bold as the starship Enterprise it dominates the main street of the village. Modern retro architecture gives it a twentieth century timelessness, and the interior has the coziness of Barnes and Noble without the unpleasant commercial aftertaste. The children have their own wing with a huge selection of books, media and even expensive educational toys to borrow. There are plenty of community meeting rooms, and a large computer lab--not counting the separate children's lab. The DVD collection is pretty up-to-date, but not in a top 40 way. Some of the titles are the kind only an elitist snob could love. My personal favorite feature is the resale book room which relieves my guilt over bad book acquisitions both when I donate and when I purchase. The librarians have noticed I'm a groupie, and their pity embarrasses me. I'm not alone though, some Saturday mornings there's a line of people waiting to get in.

Benjamin Franklin isn't one of my heroes, but I have to admit the guy had some great ideas. The American lending library was his best. To share books is to share ideas. To have a common reading room is to have a common mind. Certainly, it is a crowded and contentious mind, but still, the ideas are all there, co-existing under one roof. The Public Library fosters the unity and the brilliance that together have made us great. America is not a nation bound together by blood, but rather by ideas. A community that values those ideas, will value its library.