Libraries: A Love Affair
By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
I walk into the library and smell it: paper, pages, ink, sometimes leather and glue—the scent of books, the old and new stories. When I open a book, a word odor wafts up with a love tale, war epic, a medieval ballad of loss, or the aroma of an essay on food so good you want to eat it. That’s the first love of a library, that scent. My love of literature started with libraries, with that scent, the spirit of story.
I grew up in a farm family inundated by work and love, but not many books. On the one shelf given to that purpose, the Bible, a Catholic catechism, Grimm’s and Anderson’s fairy tales, some books on farming, a few hard cover novels—Rebecca and Dragonwyk were two I remember, and a handful of Reader’s Digest condensed books. Later, my mother bought children’s books and the Disney kidlit books, but not much literary or even popular literature—not for lack of interest, but because a farm insisted on work time, not reading time. Despite the paucity of reading time, my father read certain magazines avidly—Michigan Farmer, Michigan Outdoors, Field and Stream, and National Geographic—over late night coffee. Neither my mother or father completed high school, again not for lack of interest, but because both were waylaid by the Depression, WWII, and then plain old poverty. That said, both liked learning. After the war, each in different circumstances, each would lie about graduating high school so that they could be further educated—my father with the GI bill, my mother in nurse’s training. Granted, a practical education, but they believed in education and because of that, they believed in libraries.
As soon as we were old enough, my mother loaded up we five ragamuffins on the weekly grocery trip, and unloaded us at the tiny Hart library, a converted garage in which the scent of diesel ran strongly under the scent of those musty pages. At first the place seemed worn and cold and dark, but while my mother was talking with the librarian, I found the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and the seduction began. I sat on a straight-backed chair and had to be scolded before closing the cover of The Password to Larkspur Lane. There were at least two dozen volumes. I wanted to cry with disappointment. How could I leave?
Then my mother said I could check out a book. Check-out a book? Once I understood I would be allowed to continue this childhood love affair, my first question was how many. How many Nancy Drews can I take? The limit was five books. Then my mother, who knew me better than I knew myself, explained the fines. If I didn’t remember to return them, didn’t get them back into the car on grocery shopping day, or lost them, damaged them, misplaced them, loaned them out, I would have to pay a fine. With my own money. The shame of it. None of that mattered to me—if I even heard it. These books were my escape, my way into another world, a world I desperately needed as I had begun to realize what an odd duck I was in that farm family. I would, for the rest of my life, be supporting libraries by paying fines for late books. I didn’t care. I wanted those books.
Thus, almost as deeply as farm life, the church, and 4-H club, libraries influenced me. Hart library was the first of what became a series of beloved spaces. Though my parents worried that I was too much of a reader, too deeply invested in the alternative worlds that books offered, I had inherited their love of learning, and the way they valued that the knowledge was there, stored in a place, even if they didn’t always use it. In the end, they gave me my lead to read pretty much what I wanted—or they were too busy to notice. I discovered the realms beyond fairy tales all the way to Tolkein’s fantasies, to which no Harry Potter can stand up as far as I’m concerned.
In the sixties, I learned to research in a new library in our town. Despite the new paint smell, I could still catch the scent of more and more books. In the seventies, I became adept at the card catalogue, and fell in love with the new library at Grand Valley State College. There, the library shifted from the place of escape to the place of possibility. In its quiet stacks I found information on anything about which I was curious. On the third floor I claimed a carrel for study, but when I was tired, I wandered the stacks, pulling out and putting back random books: from spirituality to plumbing, the library had everything. I learned the pleasure of thinking.
Somehow, I got into graduate school and found a campus job refiling books. I loved most of all working in the top floor of Western Michigan University’s library, where I filed art books and inadvertently learned about art, a love that has never waned. Thinking back, I’m not sure how many books I actually filed and how many I lingered over, fingering glossy pages, studying images. Eventually my boss moved me to a boring historical section, the medievalists, so I wouldn’t be distracted—you can guess how that went. Before I graduated, I knew every section of the library. By the time I earned my Masters, I was under the delusion that I would become a reference librarian, and actually started attending classes before realizing that I was out of money and needed a full-time job.
Since then, I’ve had a dozen library cards for a dozen places, including Lancaster, England, and Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. My favorite libraries are the old Carnegie designs, but any library with a sunny spot will serve me well. Because I became a teaching writer, I have seen libraries in every size and shape; I’ve probably paid fines on every one of them too. I now have a home library the size of that first tiny library in Hart, but I still go to the Glen Lake Community Library several times a month. I cherish it. Now, I check out audio books, and these tales save me on the long road trips I take to present workshops at other libraries throughout the state.
I am still paying fines.
Those libraries I visit throughout the state have changed dramatically since I first walked into the dark, converted garage of my hometown library. Libraries have grown-up with these times, and at their best are a reflection of the thinking of a community, as they should be. Now they serve as cultural centers, treasure houses that function in broad and far-reaching ways: as media and film centers, computer centers, research centers, literacy centers, community centers, meeting places, cultural programming sites, afterschool safe places. They provide youth, elder, diversity, and a broad range of creative programming. Most of all they serve as centers of access to knowledge. These places continue to invite us to explore ideas, to be aware of the larger world, to research in modes unimaginable in previous times. Libraries are not mere warehouses for books, but offer the public access to information of all kinds to all people—a most American concept. They are places of possibility, ignorance busters where the common good meets individual interests in a relationship of mutual respect.
My little library in my town was a first love, a first freedom, the first place where I consciously chose exactly what I wanted, where I followed an interest and exercised my curiosity. It is a uniquely American institution, one that I cherish for its breadth and depth, for the opportunity it gives us all. It is a place where still, due to my own behaviors, I pay fines, mostly because I am a person who would prefer to hold the story a few days longer in my fingers before I give it back. I want books (or audio CD’s or music or movies or plain information) laid open in my palms, the scent of paper and ink—or whatever else literature is made of—rising to nurture imagination. I want stories and information and computers and media a mile deep, a library for everyone with all the options, a gift we can give ourselves to know.
Glen Lake Library seeks approval of operating millage
From staff reports
Voters in Kasson, Empire, and Glen Arbor Townships will be asked to consider a new operating millage for the Glen Lake Library on Aug. 2. The current millage, passed in 1996, has expired, funding the library through the end of this year only.
The Glen Lake Library operating millage of 0.28 mills is one of the lowest in Michigan, and provides tremendous services to Glen Lake area residents. The millage is proposed for five years, and would cost just $28 per year for a home with a taxable value of $100,000.
The Library offers an array of services for every age and interest group in the Glen Lake area, including support for early and ongoing literacy; opportunities for lifelong learning; and access to a world of information. The library achieves this through its shelved collection of print and recorded books, movies, and music CDs; public computers and WiFi, with high-speed Internet access; and thousands of electronic books and magazines, along with other online resources that can even be accessed from home.
Citizens for the Glen Lake Library Operating Millage ask your support in voting Yes on Aug. 2 to maintain the operations of the Glen Lake Library. July 5 is the last day to register to vote in the three townships. To learn more please stop by the library Monday – Saturday, or visit them online at GlenLakeLibrary.net, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/CGLLOM.
