Canby Public Library
My first library memory is from when I was three or four years old. Mom took me to the Canby Public Library, which was located on Grant, across from Parsons and the Canby Big Store. We checked out books like Small Pig, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Millions of Cats.
In 1975, the library moved to the basement of the Graham's Building. It was around this time that I got my first library card: a flimsy white piece of paper with a heavy rectangular metal piece in one corner. I learned to use the card catalog. I loved the card catalog. (I now want one for my home library.)
When I was young, the Canby Public Library seemed huge. There were books everywhere! From third grade on, my favorite area was the science fiction section. I checked out all of the Isaac Asimov, the Larry Niven, the Arthur C. Clarke. I devoured the James Blish Star Trek adaptations. (!!?!?! In researching a link for Blish, I found this page which seems to indicate that he didn't write the Star Trek adaptations, he only edited them!)
Eventually, though, I stopped going to the Canby Public Library. (In many ways, the high school library was superior.) It's now located in the old Coast-to-Coast Hardware building, and I think it's one of the saddest libraries I've ever known. The book selection grows more anemic every year, and dated, too. Why does one library need twenty books on elementary use of the internet (circa 1997)? Why is this same library purging the classics? I get tense just thinking about it.
Philander Lee Media Center
I attended first grade and part of second grade at Eccles School, but I have no vivid recollection of the library. I do remember the library from Philander Lee, the new elementary school on the south side of town.
Philander Lee was an open school: the classrooms were constructed without interior walls (meaning each room had only three walls), and each of room opened onto the central area that contained the library. Or, as we were taught from the very first day, not a library, but a "media center". The media center was state-of-the-art (for 1976), featuring individual filmstrip stations, audio stations, etc. A library had only books, we were told; this was a media center.
I loved the media center.
The librarians maintained an outstanding collection of books. I first read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from volumes borrowed from the Philander Lee Media Center. (To this day I'm not sure why an first-through-fourth elementary school would have had The Lord of the Rings on its shelves, but I'm not complaining.) Other favorites included Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective, The Hardy Boys, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Johnny Tremain. Oh — and all the mouse books: The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Runaway Ralph, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Basil of Baker Street, etc.
The best part about the media center was its design. It was a comforting place. It was a tall, open area, yet it felt close and safe. The circulation desk stood at one end, and next to it one could find the encyclopedias and the filmstrip stations. Nearby were shelves and shelves of books. A long set of shelves divided this part of the media center from the a more functional area; on the far end were two larger areas where classes could gather for reading time or for group activities. There was also a group of tables and chairs here for work space.
Knight School Library
I attended Knight School for fifth and sixth grades. The school was under construction the entire time I was there: the cafeteria was expanded, the classrooms were beautified, and a new library was added. (For a time during fifth grade, our classroom had no windows, only large sheets of plastic. I can remember a cold and stormy winter with the wind and the rain and the greyness beating against the plastic.)
The old library was still around during fifth grade. It was a small, tight, confining space, hot and stifling. It was packed with books. It felt homey. It was here that I first found Tintin (Red Rackham's Treasure, which I read again and again), and that I first read John Christopher's The White Mountains. There were some long tables at the far end of this tiny library, and I have two distinct memories of them: playing chess with Dave and Andrew, etc., and trading some worthless (to my mind) DC Comics to Darren Misner for his copies of X-Men #135-138.
The new library was open by our sixth grade year. It was a tall, open room, but not a comforting space like Lee's media center. It felt cold and barren. The only book I can remember borrowing in sixth grade is The Mad Scientists' Club.
Ackerman Junior High School Library
I don't remember much about Ackerman Junior High School's Library, either. It was mainly a place for us geeks to meet to goof off. I do remember that sometimes I'd look up a book in the card catalog and then, when I went to find it on the shelves, the book would not be where I expected it. When I'd ask the librarians about it, they'd explain that the book was kept behind the desk and that parental permission was required to check it out. This happened several times in junior high, and often for books I later thought were quite innocuous (e.g. The Witch of Blackbird Pond).
My most vivid memories of this library are: reading Bloom County (new at the time) with Jonathan McDowell, and our eighth grade English class poetry recital. ("In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round, etc." Twenty years later and I still remember that damn poem!)
Canby Union High School Library
This library was generally unremarkable — it was just a generic library. However, it had a fine collection of books, and the librarians were always helpful.
The two most distinctive features of this library were both on the north side of the room. In one corner there was a largish section of record albums for patrons to borrow. In another corner there were three glass-windowed study rooms. Once, Mitch Sherrard managed to get a group of us ejected from the library: he was inside of one of the rooms and he slammed himself against the window, arms up, doing a "fish-face". This made much more noise than he'd expected, and the librarian was not pleased. We were evicted and then had to suffer a stern lecture from Mr. Dage. (It was a perhaps little-known secret that these study rooms were good "makeout" spots if you could swing it…)
Mark O. Hatfield Library at Willamette University
I didn't like this library.
First of all, it used the Library of Congress classification system. (Maybe all college libraries use this nightmarish system — I know librarians love it — but that doesn't mean I have to like it.) I'd spent twelve years memorizing the good ol' Dewey Decimal numbers (astronomy? 520! psychology? 150! biography? everyone together now: 921! (though now, inexplicably, 920)), now I was faced with a bunch of nonsense.
Also — and again, maybe this is true of all college libraries — the library had the worst fiction section I've ever seen.
There were some things about the library that I liked:
- It was the first library I'd used with a computerized card catalog.
- The entire bottom floor was devoted to journals and periodicals. Awesome!
- There were several rooms upstairs with up-to-date stereo equipment. I spent many hours here copying my friends' vinyl records to tape (a primitive form of file-sharing that never seemed to bother the media conglomerates).
- One of the upstairs meeting rooms was large enough (and open enough) for small concerts: piano recitals and string quartets, etc. Very nice.
- The north wall of the library was all-glass and looked out onto the Mill Stream. On rainy days it was comforting to sit before the glass, reading a paper, killing time before Psych.
Salem Public Library
Without a doubt, the finest library I have ever known is the Salem Public Library, and for any reason you could possibly care to name.
The facility is huge, but not daunting. The book collection is both broad and deep. The staff is knowledgeable and helpful. Their multimedia selection is outstanding. (This was the only library I've ever known that allowed patrons to borrow computer software.) There are many tables and chairs at which to ready or study. The magazine section is excellent. (At the Canby Public Library, you're out of luck unless you want to borrow religious magazines.)
When I needed to do research for a paper, I'd often skip the campus library and head to the public library instead. (It helped that the walk was short and pleasant in every season.)
I could not possibly do this library the justice it deserves. If you're in Salem, you ought to be frequenting the public library.
Libraries have been good to me, but now I'm having fun building one of my own.
On this day at foldedspace.org
2005 — On the Run In which I have begun to run. Also, I share dreams and cat photos.
Hurm. It would take far too long to list all the Libraries I have known, having moved around an awful lot.
I'll just second JDs comments about Salem Public Library and the Mark O. Hatfield library. Hatfield was a nice, pleasant building, but I found it frustrating to use as an actual library. I'd always fall asleep there.
I remember the Probstfield Elementary School library (4th-6th Grade) in Moorhead quite well. Not the first Library I visited, but the library at which I got most of my reading material during the years I became a reader. The Fargo/Moorhead area is blessed with three colleges and we lived in the right place -- I could bike to Concordia, MSU, and the Moorhead public libraries all very easily. Heinlein, Encyclopedia Brown, The Hobbit, Watership Down, King Arthur, Alvin Fernald, The "mouse" books, as JD called them (you left out the Rescuers!), Homer Price, The Great Brain, and even the novel that Planet of the Apes was based on. An excellent school library, despite it's small physical size.
My favorite library, despite Salem's excellent facility, is (or was) the downtown Reno Public Library in Reno, Nevada. Can't find any pictures, but it was very neat inside. Spiral staircases, bridges, trees and a fountain. All in that sort of dated 60s modern kind of architecture.
As for Dewey Decimal vs. Library of Congress, I can't speak with authority, but all of the college libraries I've ever used (7, by my count) have used Library of Congress. High Schools and Public Libraries seem to generally use Dewey Decimal. I highly suspect that decision has to do with the browesability and simplicity of DD vs. finicky categorization that comes from LoC. Different systems for people with different requirements for their information stores... Or perhaps it's the difference between a working library and a casual library. Dunno.