Elayne Clift (elayne-clift.com) has written this column about women, politics, and social issues for two deecades.
BRATTLEBORO-A little girl learning to read sits in a chintz chair in her bedroom, The Tale of Peter Rabbit in her hands. She found the story in the local library, thrilled that she can read and follow the tale page by page.
That little girl was me. I was excited that I could read, and that story launched my weekly visits to the library. Later, when I could read more advanced books, I would take out at least two books a week, and I would immediately sit in my chintz chair to start reading them.
Soon I graduated to biographies of heroic girls and of interesting and important women, like Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. I have loved reading ever since.
Our library was full of promising tales, both true and fictional. I remember creeping along the shelves, my hands touching the dark wood, as I searched for books, first in the children’s section and later among the young adult shelves and then from the marvelous seas of adult offerings.
I was thinking of this in recent weeks because April was National Library Month, which celebrates the critical role libraries and librarians play in expanding our knowledge, encouraging our curiosity, facilitating our attempts at research, or simply helping us find a good book to curl up with on a snowy day.
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In the days before the internet, long drawers of index cards would tell me where to find a book. If I wasn’t successful, a librarian would help me, which often led to a conversation about what I wanted to read.
Later, when I began to visit historical libraries that had long rows of tables with green glass lamps where serious scholars worked, I was fascinated by how intense they were.
And I have been lucky enough to visit amazing libraries in several countries, like the Trinity College library in Dublin, where the Book of Kells resides. Written more than 1,200 years ago, it is known for the beauty of its stunningly illuminated borders on the manuscript pages that people wait in line to see. There’s also the Bodleian libraries in Oxford, England, comprised of 23 libraries.
Lots of historic European libraries are amazing. They are beautiful, both for what’s inside and for their exquisite architecture. They’re worth a visit, if not a pilgrimage.
But you don’t have to go abroad to see a world-famous library. The New York Public Library in Manhattan is known for its huge research collections, its marble lions at the entrance on Fifth Avenue, and its Beaux-Arts architecture. It houses the Gutenberg Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the real Winnie-the-Pooh doll!
One historic library to note is the Pack Horse Library Project, established as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) to help lift the United States out of the Great Depression from 1935 to 1943. It was an interesting initiative, because it provided roving horseback libraries to boost employment and literacy.
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It’s not only libraries I admire. Librarians are among the special people who make libraries work. And they go back as far as Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276 BCE–194 BCE), a Greek mathematician and astronomer who was the head librarian at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.
Some other famous librarians include Benjamin Franklin, who founded the Library Company of Philadelphia and served as its first librarian, and Lewis Carroll, who was also a librarian before he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And the artist Marcel Duchamp worked as a librarian in Paris.
Thankfully, there are also activist librarians, like the ones who refuse to remove banned books from their shelves and even showcase them.
Barbara Gittings was a radical librarian who promoted LGBTQ+ literature. She also created the first gay caucus in the American Library Association. And Effie Lee Morris, an early 20th-century librarian, advocated for library services for children, visually impaired people, and minorities, becoming the first Black person to hold an administrative position in the San Francisco Public Library.
It’s no wonder librarians are special people who quietly go about their work in support of learning, literacy, and legacies. Some of them are heroic, like Belle da Costa Greene, a prominent librarian and manuscript expert in the 20th century who passed as white while curating the rare book collection of financier J.P. Morgan. She hid her identity to navigate a racist society and became a powerful cultural force, serving as the first director of the Morgan Library & Museum.
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So, I’m belatedly thankful for librarians and libraries, especially in these difficult times that call for solace and quiet pleasure.
Reading new works by favorite authors, or new ones, is like comfort food. They soothe us, perhaps inspire us to be courageous, and often gives us hope. As writer Neil Gaiman has said, “Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.”
Next time you visit a library, give the librarian a high five or say “thank you.” It’s well-deserved and bound to make their day.
This Voices column was submitted to The Commons.
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