Happy Birthday to
Susi and to her brother Richard!
This library is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Carnegie Library, owned by the City of Lawrence, Kansas was built in 1904 and is located on the northwest corner of 9th and Vermont Streets in downtown Lawrence. The City has completed stabilization and structural renovation work.
This was Rachel's first library. We went to story hour in the basement once a week. The room was filled with wiggly three year olds who would rather browse the stacks and use the bathrooms than listen to a marvelous lady named Mary tell stories.
Yes, it is another product of the generous donations by Andrew Carnegie. In his time, he would sponsor over 3,000 libraries. All he expected was the land would be donated and the building would be maintained. A grant for $27,000 was given; the building cost less than $28,000.
The library in the picture above was replaced by a new, modern library in 1972. Rachel had given up wiggling by now and had no patience for the three year olds that were wiggling. Bud was two, he would soon find the "gut book" and look at the over lays of organs and muscles.
It was in this library that Rachel met the book Policeman Small, Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka, and Snip, Snap, and Sner. Bud would start reading the Dr. Suess books, and Ryen read the Berenstein Bears. My favorites of all the children's books has and always will be the stories about Frances the badger. The episode about eating is my favorite.
Rachel would float from one section to another as her reading improved. Mary, the beloved story teller, helped us direct Rachel to the best books for her abilities. The limit for books out of the children's library was 10; just enough to fill a beer flat. She would read all the way home and by the next day, she was ready to go back to the library. There was some discussion in the fall that she had really read 250 books on the summer reading program.
Mary said she was ready for chaptered books. She led us to the fiction and once, again, she loaded up her beer flat. I remember specifically when the new leather bound copies of Frank Baum books arrived. Rachel was the first one to check them out. I have visions of the two of us sitting on her yellow sleigh bed reading chapters.
Bud was challenged to read his books for the summer reading program. We took him to the baseball and sports books. The idea was you read or you don't play ball. He may or may not have read them. He did play ball.
If Ryen ever went to the Lawrence Public Library, I really don't remember it. I know Rachel seemed to go from the children's department to the Spencer Library at KU.
I have my own ideas about the survival of libraries. If you look in the stacks for up to date information, it just isn't there. Who wants to read about sites for genealogy in old books or old magazines for that matter. I took 13 copies of a computer orientated magazine home recently. I selected 30 web sites, 10 of them were not found.
Libraries are limited. Everybody wants access to reliable information. The Internet is a gateway to unlimited data and information about government, business, and the community. Multiple information providers on the Internet make fact checking easy and reliable. No single person, such as a librarian, can or should be relied upon to verify accuracy. Single sources for information verification are inefficient and potentially dangerous.
Lawrence wants a new library. Fargo moved their books to several satellite stations and tore down their old, built in 1970's, and just now have a plan.
I have taken my library business to Moorhead, MN. There are no people in the stacks. There are retired gents and homeless reading the newspapers. People are clamoring for the computers; a few of them are silver haired. I read an article from another city which stated, "Don’t expect kids, seniors, and everyone else to trudge downtown for the convenience of librarians".
The point is well taken. However, as an activity person for several years, I will tell you that senior-seniors are willing to accept emails from their children but not write back. In my time at the Manor, I rolled many chairs to the computers. A few caught on, short term therapy patients used in daily but the senior-seniors had lost the passion for learning something new.
For all who read fiction, the library still has its merits. Rachel browsed her grandmother's book shelf in the early eighties. She read Girl of the Limberlost. The book is a fiction about self reliance. The girl was deeply wounded by her embittered mother's lack of sympathy for her aspirations, Elnora finds comfort in the nearby Limberlost Swamp, whose beauty and rich abundance provide her with the means to better her life. The library offers this fiction, not in the hard back cover like Rachel read but on video cassette or large print!
In the early publications of the Thief River Falls News, when they listed new books, Girl of the Limberlost was one of the books!
Mary was Rachel's mentor; Mary at Moorhead was my mentor. My Mary emailed yesterday, "and I got some good news also!! I got accepted into the Master's program for Library Science @ the University of Denver for this fall, so I'll (sadly!) be leaving the library in the middle of July already! I'm excited to go, but very sad to leave!!See you soon -Mary"
Like Anne from Ohio says, "The only thing that stays the same is everything keeps changing".
e.
No comments:
Post a Comment