What’s a library?
This is about the Carthage Free Library. I’d love to hear about your public, academic, or special library.
My library is located in a charming building on Budd Street, but its services are at the Farmer’s Market, the school gym, and anywhere the community gathers.
My library is summer reading, water balloon tag, and animal encounters. It is the place where fantasy and reality intersect to spark further imagination and investigation by readers young and old alike.
My library is a safe place to go after school. It is a place to create, study, play, read, and learn. The library is Lego club, tea parties, story time, and art class. It is patrons painting the mural in the children’s room and planting bushes in the library’s front yard.
My library is paranormal investigation, author visits, local history classes, and cooking demonstrations. The library’s local history room is a treasure trove of resources and host to an oral history project. My library is a resource community members need to improve themselves and the community. My library is job fairs, internet access, basic skills classes, and the chance to make a better life. And, my library is a massive capital campaign undertaken to ensure physical access to the entire library for all patrons.
My library is family movie nights, craft classes for all ages, and spaghetti dinners. The library is Pysanky egg decorating, wine tasting, monthly book club, and student art shows. It is friendly staff, regular volunteers, an active Board of Trustees, and a Friends of the Library organization–all of which constantly strive to connect to and add value to their community.
In a word, what’s my library?
Categories: Improve Society, Librarianship, New Libarianship
Kate Gukeisen 
Reblogged this on Vagabond Librarian and commented:
I wrote this post back in May 2013, in response to a Huffington Post article written by a businessman who couldn’t understand why libraries were even around anymore–you know, what with the Internet, search engines, and ebooks. While most librarians responded with passion and a fair amount of outrage at the privileged stance taken by this businessman, who seemed to think libraries mostly exist to provide internet access for “the poor.” I was inspired by the librarians who took this outrage and passion, and channeled it into positive advocacy in the form of Tumblr and Twitter challenges to post the difference libraries have made in your life, and in the form of evidence-based responses and invitations to visit their libraries, which they know are hubs of the community. I link to the original article and detail the “teachable moment” in another post (which I will very sneakily not link to here, because I would love for you to explore my blog to find it!). In this post, I did something I would love to have student do in my school library–add to a physical bulletin board or online blog a simple sentence about what their library is to them.
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