Library Memories

I've never been good at picturing places described to me visually.  If someone starts telling me about a house they saw "And then off the foyer there was a breakfast nook, and the kitchen had an open floor plan...", they lose me well before they get very far.  However, I can remember exactly how the branch of the Elyria, OH, public library we used looked, and where the children's section was, and I last set foot there when I was 6.  Libraries hold a place in my heart that I don't think any other physical location does.

A few libraries stand out the most.  One is the Rockland, Maine library.  It was (and is) a Carnegie Library, and it was beautiful.  It felt like a palace.  When I spent a day in Rockland, which we sometimes did in the summer as my father worked, I spent most of it at the library.  It always felt cool in there, even on hot days, and it always felt quiet and somehow sacred.  I can remember how the wooden floor felt on my feet, how the reading room had beautiful windows, how the ceilings were high all over, how the stone steps looked.  It was a wonderful place.

Another library I loved deeply was the Folger Library at the University of Maine, in Orono.  I remember vividly my first time going there, on my very first day of my freshman year.  To say I was floored is an understatement. It was HUGE.  I think I was told it's the 3rd largest library in New England, and I believe it.  It seemed like a miracle---within a 5 minute walk of my dorm, there were more books than I ever dreamt of having access to.  The library was open most nights until midnight, and I hope I don't sound incredibly nerdy saying I made a lot of late night runs to it (amid other freshman fun).  When I started, there were old style elevators that went to little half-floors between the other floors, and those felt like secret hideways.  I rarely saw anyone else on those floors, and I could wander them to my heart's content alone.  There were huge rooms just full of bound journals, and I would pick interesting ones at random---a 1920s restaurant trade magazine, a 1950s home ec teacher's journal---it was fascinating.  There was a room called The Oak Room that had a collection of recent books and interesting fiction, and also all the local newspapers for Maine.  I would go there to read my home town paper, on the huge wooden tables.  I could go on and on---wow, did I love that place.

After I graduated, I lived in the Orono area for a while, and started using the Bangor library.  It was an oddity at that time as it had closed stacks.  If you wanted a book, you had to find it in the card catalog, write down the Dewey Decimal number and take it to the desk, and a worker would go get it.  I miss the browsing, but I liked the excitement in a way---you never knew quite what the book was actually going to look like until they got it for you.  It felt like a surprise.

I've lived in Boston for 20 years now, and strangely, I haven't really fallen in love with any of the library branches here.  The Hyde Park library is very nice---it is also a Carnegie, I believe, and it was expanded very tastefully a few years back---but although I've used it plenty, it doesn't quite feel like other libraries have for me.  Maybe that's because now I mostly do my browsing on-line.  I love the Boston library website, where I can search for any book I want, and with a click, ask for it to be waiting for me at any branch.  It's like free book shopping.  But no matter how easy and enjoyable that is, it isn't the same.  Libraries have a distinctive smell---a dusty book smell.  I miss that.  They have an sound---a hollow kind of sound when you walk, I think from the noises being absorbed by all the books.  They have a feel---a cool, welcoming feel.  They have an aura that no online site, no Nook, no Barnes and Noble, no other building will ever quite have.  I'm glad I have my memories of some special book palaces we call libraries.