Sue Lani Madsen: Libraries still pillars of communities big and small
Among many growing-up firsts, my first library card was more precious to me than my first driver’s license.
You had to be 6 years old to have your very own library card. We were regular library patrons, and Mom and Dad readily checked out books for my sister and me, but having my very own card would be an adultlike milestone.
On my sixth birthday, my dad proudly took me to the Manito branch of the Spokane Public Library. There was a short, hushed conversation at the checkout desk. I remember watching the adults’ faces, seeing my dad’s disappointment and the librarian’s regret. No card for me. I met the age requirement, but my midwinter birthday meant I wasn’t in the first grade yet. Insisting I could already read made the librarian look sadder. Dad let me check out a whole stack of books on his card and we went home.
It was an early lesson in the difference between a bureaucrat and a bureaucracy. I understood it wasn’t anybody in particular’s fault, there was just a silly rule about no library card for unschooled 6-year-olds. My neighborhood librarian continued to be a special part of my life. She didn’t have a name, she was just The Librarian, and she had superpowers.
She remembered that I liked mystery stories, marked with a skull-and-crossbones sticker on the binding. She was the keeper of the list for the popular “Little House on the Prairie” books that had to be read in the correct order. It seemed an eternity for my turn for the next book. She presided over many summers’ worth of reading programs. Competitive book-reading was a sport in which even the uncoordinated and nearsighted could excel.
I met another superpowered Librarian in Oakland, California, the summer I was 11. Dad had two weeks’ active duty with the U.S. Coast Guard at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Our family was staying in a modest urban motel in a single room rented by the week. The pool was small and lost its charm quickly. There was a library a few blocks away. I wasn’t a resident, and I couldn’t get a library card, but I was desperate to read. The Librarian came to my rescue. Mom let me walk to the library on my own to read for a blissful hour or two of freedom from our small motel room. The Librarian carefully saved my bookmarked adventure story under the counter, handing it to me conspiratorially when I entered her sanctuary.
Librarians are such rebels.
Librarians knew how to find the answers to any question before Google was invented. Libraries are still a safe space for books on every topic, the foundation of free speech in a free society. Now they have so much more than books – movies, music, training resources, databases, computer services. Spokane libraries even have a digital branch accessible anytime. As a nontechie, I am grateful for the Librarians at the South Hill branch library who help my mom load books on to her Kindle.
My little community in the wheat fields has a library, too. The building was a one-room schoolhouse, converted by local volunteers and led by a volunteer super-Librarian for many years. Insurance and utilities are covered by a modest local operating levy, voted on by a community that’s cautious about taxing and spending. It’s one of the three pillars of public life in our community – library, church and school. But we can’t afford to hire a Librarian, and our volunteer super-Librarian needed to step back. The building and its books are there, but libraries are lonely storage units without their Librarians.
One of Spokane’s community pillars is the Spokane Public Library system. Voters in the city of Spokane are being asked to renew their support with a modest local levy. It’s about more than buildings and books. It’s Librarians who help a child with homework, or a seeker find a job, or a business owner research their market. It’s about access to the world.
And the silly rules about age have changed. Now even preschoolers can proudly check out books in their own names.