In Praise of Libraries!

Yesterday, I had to kill time (terrible metaphor) while waiting to hear a friend of mine do a reading of his memoir Blackboard at Book Passage in Corte Madera. I didn’t want to drive home to the East Bay and then make another trip to Marin County, so after I finished teaching in San Francisco, I took the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County and hung out at the Corte Madera Library.

With audio and ebooks so popular, I half expected the library to be a ghost town, inhabited by print books but no one there to read them. Happily, I was wrong, and while I only check out library books to listen to on Overdrive, I was reminded of what an amazing place libraries are. I also discovered that readers still use them!

When I first arrived, there were no parking spaces near the building (I’d expected the lot to be vacant). I had to drive around for 10 minutes before I found a spot. When I walked in the door, I realized this was a happening place. It wasn’t just buzzing with library workers. But people of all ages were using the space.

The children’s section had a steady stream of kids carrying books that they wanted to check out. As I walked from the entrance to the back of the building, hoping to find an empty seat where I could work on my laptop, I discovered that nearly every seat was filled. Some visitors were sitting in overstuffed chairs reading magazines or newspapers. Others were in the computer areas, intently focused on the screens. But even more were strolling the aisles of books, checking out the latest and selecting ones they wanted to borrow.

All of this was encouraging: traditional reading has not died out in America. But what I loved most was the feeling of community I felt with this world of readers. The Corte Madera Library’s physical plant has lots of light and wood paneling, so the atmosphere is welcoming. But it also was lovely just to sit there silently with others who were enjoying the space.

No words were exchanged, yet we all clearly were there because we wanted to embrace the world that the words in these books and other printed sources represented. They opened portals onto subjects we otherwise wouldn’t know about. And I was grateful for this opportunity to reconnect with what libraries signify: the egg of learning that never stops hatching as long as we’re open to what it offers.

Filed under: Links Tagged: books, corte madera library, libraries, library, place of learning