Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books. She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula.
As I parked my car outside the Missoula Public Library I had to wonder: How many people actually use the library anymore? What with Kindle e-books and Amazon and The Book Exchange, where you can trade, sell, and buy for a lower price than even Costco, does anyone bother to burn the gasoline and drive to the library, pay for a parking meter if there is no spot in the small parking lot, and check out a book, knowing there is a time constraint: due date come rain, snow, sleet or dead of night?
Yet here it is, if you are willing, with books entirely yours for the reading.
Indeed, one must organize in order to make optimal use of the facility I’ve always considered a minor miracle. You have to get a card, keep it in your wallet so that you have your member number handy, and together with the memory of your pin code, you can then place a hold on any new bestseller or classic if it is not in stock that day, as long as you are willing to wait to be notified that your ship has come in.
Ever since I could walk well enough to toddle on down the street to our local library, I ranked the experience of bringing home a bag filled with books and plenty of time to read them right up there with a bonanza birthday party. Where else do you garner a variety of entertainment scot-free?
These days I keep a list and on the same day I check out my read that has just come available I place a hold on the next entry. So far, I’ve managed a fairly steady turnover without too much stress about due date crossover. Whenever my husband boasts about his reasonably priced and easily accessible Kindle library, I point out that although he may rollover titles for a pittance, so can I never be without a book, and without adding a penny to the VISA balance.
While walking up the stairs into the Missoula Library main room, I recollected that I have a cousin who has been a California librarian all her life, and recently she told me that the advent of technological reading sources has caused her branch the need to discover other uses for former reading rooms, other avenues of income such as renting out to meeting groups and gatherings.
On this particular lazy Montana summer afternoon I was drawn to the selection of “New Fiction”, an array of books that is displayed for all to see before entering the stacks. As my eye raced over titles, a pleasant looking silver-haired gentleman spoke.
“Have you read anything lately that you’d recommend?”
As a matter of fact, I had, and so I began to offer titles and brief summaries in case one or the other might match his taste in genre. We talked favorite authors (shared a few) and right in the middle of my praiseworthy commentary on Richard Ford’s recent novel Canada he smiled.
“Do you ever notice that since the arrival of computers, people like us don’t gather like this in libraries anymore?” he asked. I told him I’d just been internally debating the very same question.
“We rely on everything by computer now, especially communication,” I added.
“And have you noticed that people don’t have impromptu conversations like this as much as they used to—just start chatting together? Everyone is so guarded and password protected.” Such an interesting man, I thought, as I absorbed his meaning.
We thanked each other for willingness to speak without hesitation, for recommendations to add to our reading lists, and pure and simple, for exchange. There is the pleasure of the written word and then…there is the exhilaration of the spoken, especially from a stranger.
Well worth the fifty cents I’d cranked into the Main Street parking meter.