Librarian Love
21/11/09 09:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsIn asking people to introduce themselves a couple of days ago, I found that a number of folks here work in libraries. So I outed myself in my total love for libraries and librarians. This is a lifelong thing for me. I got my first library card when I was four; by the time we moved out of NYC I was hiking the eight blocks to the nearest library, taking out the eight books I was allowed, shlepping them home somehow (it never occurred to me to bring a bag--dopey child), reading them in a couple of days, returning them, and repeating the process. My parents were totally out of the loop, and it was one of the librarians at the now-vanished NYPL branch on Eighth Avenue and 13th Street who suggested, gently, that I'd read pretty much everything they had in the kids' section, and perhaps I might want to get a note from my parents which would allow them to let me take books out from the adult section downstairs.
When we moved to Massachusetts our property straddled town lines, which meant (o bliss!) that I was able to have borrowing privileges at both the Sheffield and Great Barrington libraries. The Sheffield library has since moved into what was once the elementary school (and the police department has taken over the old library...small town shifts) and the library in GB has a new wing and I can't find anything there. Both libraries were great for older books and romantic suspense; neither had much in the way of SF. I didn't care--they were books.
And at my high school the library was run by Emily Rutledge, who must have sensed in me a kindred soul: I wound up spending most of my study hall periods working in the library, shelving books and pasting in pockets and chatting with her. She was one of the first of my grownup women mentors, and it was she who suggested that I apply to her alma mater, Connecticut College (which is where I went).
In college my work study job for four years was working in the library. Freshman year this meant shelving books and adding cards to the card catalogue under the watchful eyes of Thelma Gilkes (the circulation librarian--is that not a splendid name?) and Mr. Weeks, the head librarian. But for the three years following, I was down in the basement with Bernice Radliff, who was in charge of book prep and repair. Mrs. Radliff had a radical soul in a non-radical life--she was married to a former naval officer who apparently adored her and looked on her lefty politics with amused pride; she had a grown daughter; she worked in a college library among people who thought she was a bit zany. So she and I mended hurt books and talked about life, and she was another of the women in my life who kept me sane and showed me how many ways there were to be a grownup woman.
And when there were no books to prep or repair, I went upstairs to shelve books. If I hadn't had a fondness for books before then, handling that many books, especially the older books, really did it for me. There was a Romeo and Juliet in French, with hand-colored illustrations, that I lusted after but always put back on the shelf. I came upon books that looked interesting and put them aside to check out. And it made me really, really happy to spend my ten hours a week among words, all kinds of words, and the ideas they convey, and among people who made them available.
So yes, I have a thing for libraries. And librarians. Bless you all.
When we moved to Massachusetts our property straddled town lines, which meant (o bliss!) that I was able to have borrowing privileges at both the Sheffield and Great Barrington libraries. The Sheffield library has since moved into what was once the elementary school (and the police department has taken over the old library...small town shifts) and the library in GB has a new wing and I can't find anything there. Both libraries were great for older books and romantic suspense; neither had much in the way of SF. I didn't care--they were books.
And at my high school the library was run by Emily Rutledge, who must have sensed in me a kindred soul: I wound up spending most of my study hall periods working in the library, shelving books and pasting in pockets and chatting with her. She was one of the first of my grownup women mentors, and it was she who suggested that I apply to her alma mater, Connecticut College (which is where I went).
In college my work study job for four years was working in the library. Freshman year this meant shelving books and adding cards to the card catalogue under the watchful eyes of Thelma Gilkes (the circulation librarian--is that not a splendid name?) and Mr. Weeks, the head librarian. But for the three years following, I was down in the basement with Bernice Radliff, who was in charge of book prep and repair. Mrs. Radliff had a radical soul in a non-radical life--she was married to a former naval officer who apparently adored her and looked on her lefty politics with amused pride; she had a grown daughter; she worked in a college library among people who thought she was a bit zany. So she and I mended hurt books and talked about life, and she was another of the women in my life who kept me sane and showed me how many ways there were to be a grownup woman.
And when there were no books to prep or repair, I went upstairs to shelve books. If I hadn't had a fondness for books before then, handling that many books, especially the older books, really did it for me. There was a Romeo and Juliet in French, with hand-colored illustrations, that I lusted after but always put back on the shelf. I came upon books that looked interesting and put them aside to check out. And it made me really, really happy to spend my ten hours a week among words, all kinds of words, and the ideas they convey, and among people who made them available.
So yes, I have a thing for libraries. And librarians. Bless you all.