It was bound to happen sooner or later. Decades of hard work, a lifetime of passion, and years of education cannot be tamped down for long. No matter the situation, the subject always seems to come up. It is an inexorable force that exerts its energy on me regardless of time and place.
I simply must take a few minutes to extol the virtues of libraries.
I have spent my life as a passionate reader. I first fell in love with libraries as a child, when every Wednesday was Library Day. My mother would grab the bag of books I had devoured during the week prior, and we would set off on our ten-minute walk to what I could only think of as my own personal Wonderland. To me, the library was a place full of endless possibilities. The books contained therein could take me to anywhere in existence–not to mention the many places that do not exist except in the imagination. Through those library books, I could meet people, visit places, and have experiences that would not be possible in the confines of my ordinary, if happy, life.
My wonder at the library did not diminish as I entered those rocky tween and teen years. If anything, I became more infatuated with it as my opportunity to work as a volunteer in my school libraries–as well as my continued role as a voracious bookworm–offered me solace from the social perils of middle and high school. I may have felt awkward everywhere else, but I knew what I was about in the library. I may not have been in the popular clique in school, but I could still be prom queen through the books I read.
I eventually moved on to college and, despite having a much better time of it socially, continued my library work in UC Irvine’s Langson Library. After that, it seemed to me that the next logical step was to get my Master of Library and Information Science degree. That’s how in May 2011, I wound up becoming one of those official lovers of books, knowledge, and libraries: a librarian.
Although budget cuts and a poor economy have caused me to shift my career goals since then, my love of the library has never wavered for a moment. Today’s libraries are an incredible place where information abounds. They are a meeting place for beloved traditions and new technologies. Here, e-books and physical books can live in harmony. Here, computers are tools used to locate old microfilm records. Here, there are resources both digital and physical available for use absolutely free of charge. Here, any person can access any information in any format. Nowhere else in the world is there such a place.
Now, shouldn’t we all be getting to the library?