Shhh, quiet please
There are unsung heroes in our lives who are often forgotten. I just realized recently that high on such a list are librarians. Favorite teachers, friendly neighbors, family members, we honor. But librarians do not have the same prominent profile.
This revelation came to me when I recently visited the Yorkville branch of the Toronto Public Library. I had ordered a book online and a few days later received a message that it was ready for pickup. I found it myself on the reserved shelves, scanned my library card on the checkout machine, and – eureka – it was mine for three weeks. At no time did I talk to anyone.
While librarians have a reputation for being quiet in nature, surely it’s taking the trait too far for them to have no contact with their clients. Twasn’t always so. They were an integral part of my life as my father introduced me to books. At bedtime with his help I read out loud the entire series for children by Thornton W. Burgess. My father patiently helped with pronunciations and by the time I started five-year-old kindergarten I was reading at full blast, a head start on my education for which I am forever grateful.
To supply those books, I went to the library in Guelph, Ontario, one among the 2,500 libraries built by Andrew Carnegie with their commanding pillars and domes. For children there was a back-door entrance on the lower level. A trip there had two-fold pleasure. You got to make the twenty-minute walk from home without adult accompaniment and you did the return trip with as many books as you could carry.
A magic moment came when I’d read everything in the children’s library and graduated to the adult titles upstairs. The number of books was greater and the topics far more diverse. I might have been fifteen in Grade Ten when I heard about the James Gould Cozzens book By Love Possessed. When I tried to check it out, the librarian said, “I don’t think your mother would want you reading that,” and put it on the desk behind her. Contrast that with all that’s widely available today without parental knowledge, let alone consent.
While doing research in the Madison Building of the Library of Congress in 2015, there were about a dozen reference books covering my topic. It was hard to tell from the listings which would be most helpful, so a female staffer led me down to the stacks where I was able to retrieve three or four volumes for closer scrutiny. Maybe these books are online now, but reading from home won’t be nearly as much fun.
My past experience with librarians was so enjoyable, I took my own two pre-school children to the library in Ottawa every Saturday morning until they could go on their own. And, later in life, my two grandchildren in Toronto. So thank you Andrew Carnegie and all the ladies who’ve helped me over the years. And I never did read By Love Possessed.
I too enjoyed Thorton W. Burgess courtesy of Miss Thompson in grade 2 at Tytler. Fond memories of the Guelph Public Library. What a shame it was torn down. Cheers, Bill
I fondly remember Saturday am trips to the public library though it was too far for me to walk — a “lift” into town was needed. I can still remember how amazing it was to see so many books in one place. My father often remarked on the potential for human improvement that resided on a library’s bookshelves. All that it might take was a little curiosity to seek out a good book and the patience to read it, and a life could be transformed. The modern-day digital experience of seeking out books and reading them, though often touted as being “more efficient”, is really not the same thing at all.