Sshhh! A sound I remember from my childhood at the Thayer Public Library in Braintree, Mass. Although it came to epitomize the library atmosphere for me as a child, I will thankfully admit that I was never the cause of its utterance! I was a good little girl!
I used to go there every Saturday with my best friend, Cindy. Her mother would drive us and let us roam around the shelves. Cindy would always be returning several books from the week before and never left empty handed. Upon entering, she would thrust her books to be returned up on the counter where an older woman with glasses with a very serious expression on her face would attend to them. Then off we’d go. I wandered and wondered but for some reason, never took any books out; or in the event that I did, it was only one. To watch Cindy with her arms wrapped around piles of books came to be a source of longing for me.
To this day, now an avid reader, I still can’t quite understand what my reticence to give myself over in abandon to the wonder of reading, the wonder of wandering through a library and choosing a wealth of books was all about. My wonderful mother always read to me and I had the added benefit of a very eclectic aunt whose Christmas presents were always books, and as eclectic as she.
Perhaps it was the reading curriculum at the local parochial school I attended. I can’t remember the name of the materials, but I do remember a box of color-coded cards and each color series marked a progression of difficulty in content and vocabulary. After each reading there were questions to measure comprehension. All I know is that I always seemed to find myself on a different color than the kids around me. In hindsight, I found out I was average.
I have since come to appreciate everything about my journey into reading, into libraries. I can become a bit overwhelmed sometimes with emotion, with such gratitude for my dear, dear mother, for Mrs. Whalen and Miss Jacobs and Sister Eucharia and Mr. Tannenbaum and Ms. Kilbourne and Professor Arnold and Dr. Maxwell and all in my life who have given me the love of the written word and helped to open all manner of magic and exploration to me.
I am so grateful to be a part of the Whitefield Library & Community Center in Whitefield. It seems like just yesterday I was part of a group of mostly women who were collecting boxes and bags of books donated from the community. They were loosely triaged by the newly formed book committee, a small group of women who just plain loved books. The offerings, while each one was greatly appreciated, had to be deemed appropriate by a “secret set of criteria” only members of the book committee knew.
All joking aside, they were (and are) avid readers who wanted to organize as best they could perhaps a “ragtag” offering of reading materials. It was a labor of love that followed through to gluing pockets with title and date cards in the back and stuffing them into often overcrowded shelves positioned here and there in the old grange hall. I must admit that first time I used the date stamp in the slot on the card and handed a book over to an excited reader, it was a throwback to the days of Thayer Public Library. While I was not helping a patron scroll through the Dewey Decimal System card catalog to find something, I was in some small way playing the part of a would-be librarian.
Fast forward to the purchase of the Arlington Grange Hall with a grant from Kennebec Savings; a board of directors and officers assigned. People stepped up to work in capacities that spoke to their skills and passions. Phenomenal grant writing efforts and book collecting continued; monies became available and major renovations began with budgets and schematic drawings and plans and vendor sourcing and perhaps the most amazing of all … people just kept caring.
The pandemic hit the planet and things came to a halt. Yet in time and with caution, the building and organizing and planning and collection and purchasing of books slowly continued. Now in 2022 we have a fully renovated lower level of the grange building with beautiful shelving (all matching), a collection of over 5,000 mindfully chosen fiction and nonfiction books for children and adults, a Maine authors section; spaces to gather and “quietly” chat or sit and read, a computer system with barcodes and scanners; an active and interactive web page and Facebook page.
It has not been easy, and some days have found frustration, worry and dismay coming to call. Not one of us is/was a librarian. However, what we are, all of us, is a group of dedicated people, bringing our own unique pieces to this puzzle of starting a library literally in some ways, from the ground up. It’s a creation by committee. We have much work left to do as we continue to invite and organize more volunteers, be ever mindful of our need for ongoing funding to keep the library open and consider expanded hours.
Many voices having to speak with one message … and it’s not “Sshhhhh!”
(The Whitefield Library & Community Center is at 1 Arlington Lane, Whitefield, and whitefieldlibrary.org.)
