Trouble in ParadiseI have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.&
Trouble in ParadiseI have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. —Jorge Luis Borges And I’ll bet it won’t have an internet connection. Thank you, God. When I was five, in 1938, and living in a small town in Ohio where there was no TV, no movie theater, some radio, I spent my hours at the town library, one floor above the fire station, across the street from the doctor’s office, next to the hardware store. It doubled as the town hall. Inside the library, which one reached by climbing a long, broad staircase, at the end of the room sat Sarah Levi. I do not recall her smiling or walking—she may have had a disability—but she stamped happily all the books I could carry and told me to come back soon. And I did, sometimes to check out Gone with the Wind for my mother—again— or Taylor Caldwell’s newest for my grandmother, or, as I grew older, Frank G. Slaughter’s Battle Surgeon, for me. Here Miss Levi put her foot down. “Wait a few years,” she said. Paradise looked a little less perfect right then. Since then I have lived in libraries of great renown: The British Library, the Bancroft’s rare books room in Berkeley, the Barnes Collection at the New York Public Library. I was right there in San Francisco with Nicholson Baker and his objections to ridding the new library of its card catalogues. I lamented the self-checkout system, and in the university undergraduate library I screamed (inwardly of course) when I saw that on its first floor there were no books. Where was I? Now, having left grandeur behind, I find myself in a small town (pop. 1200) not altogether different from the one where I grew up. The library—and yes, it has one—is a log cabin with reduced hours and a reduced collection. It is a starving library. To the Rescue!!!!! The California state librarian, who goes by the name of Greg Lucas, an alias for Superman, heads the program that makes books, new and old, available to the borrower upon request. Named Zip Books, the program is designed for rural communities in California. Here’s how it works: I fill out a form with title and author, and if it is not already in the catalogue (and rarely it is) and does not cost more than $35, Wanda the librarian, reduced like everything else library-related, sends the request to Heaven and Heaven sends the book directly to my post office box. I read the book and give it to the library. Cost to me: nothing. Benefit to me: everything. So, grudgingly, I admit that technology can work to our advantage as long as people like Greg Lucas and Wanda are around to keep things as Miss Levi would have them. Thanks to them, the Chester Public Library has become a little corner of Paradise, quite enough for now.Jane JuskaChester, California -- source link
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