She couldn’t help it really. She just had to pass it on to me. It was in her blood and so sure enough it’s in mine. Yep, Mom’s love of reading, books, and libraries was directly conveyed to me her third child, and the ancestral link of being particularly enamored of such things actually goes back an additional few generations.
Early in the twentieth century, my great grandmother Willie Caldwell founded Roanoke’s “Civic Betterment Club.” The goals of the club were ambitious, and well beyond just getting the livestock off the streets. The aim was to address particular needs of the growing city such as improvements to schools, parks, and playgrounds, and to establish a public library.
In the latter the club was unsuccessful, but Willie’s daughter, my aunt Sarah Butler, took up the charge. Sarah even dedicated herself to studying library science at Pratt Institute in New York. Upon her return to Roanoke, Sarah and other enthusiastic citizens pressed vigorously to encourage the city to open its first public library, and they suggested that it be housed in the city’s vacant Goodwin-Terry house in Elmwood Park.
Through a process that required more than a little persistence, campaigning, fund raising, and optimism the Roanoke Library opened in May of 1921. Several buildings and renovations – and over ninety years later – Roanoke’s main library still occupies the Elmwood Park site, and today there are six additional branches in the Roanoke library system.
When I was a tike, every week mom would take me in the Volkswagen Bug to Bullitt Avenue and park next to the duck pond (actually there were some resident swans there) and we’d head first to the main desk where she’d pick up and return books, then downstairs to the children’s department. This for me was ever a world of magic and delight in itself; and each book I’d grasp in my grubby little hands was a portal into wonders well beyond my immediate little world.
Our house was well equipped with a variety of books, and at any given time a dozen or so of them were borrowed from the library. Mom helped me learn to read as soon as I was capable, and that ever-improving skill was my entrance into dimensions infinitely beyond just leafing through picture books, a pursuit to which I had been limited for some time. And I thought that was grand.
There were two methods that mom exercised in the library to supply me with books. One was to select a few herself, the other was to set me loose among the shelves and tables to find a few items on my own. Early on my technique amounted to simply “judging a book by its cover” but I gradually got better at picking good ones. loved roaming the stacks; mom had to come find me or I would be lost among them forever.
As I grew I discovered that the library was not just for fun but for learning, for specific research – and, of course, later still that learning itself can be very satisfying – and yes, even fun.
Mom and people like Miss Surface, the Crystal Spring Elementary School librarian showed me how to find books on certain subjects. I learned the utility and elegance of the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System. As my schooling progressed I researched countless school projects at the Roanoke main library, and I learned about more advanced research tools along the way.
Skip forward a few decades and I’m more of a library nerd than ever. In my view, the existence of the internet and digital media has not at all diminished the value of the public institution, something I have certainly wondered about. In fact, I think the public library nay be more relevant today than ever before.
Of course, with the times and changing technology the library has changed too, its offerings more diverse. Besides every description of books, including digital ones, there are newspapers, periodicals, movies, audio books, and at some branches even things like microscopes and telescopes to borrow. And then there’s the huge collection of archival material. That’s a world all its own.
If a particular book is not available in the Roanoke system, it can often be procured through an inter-library loan. In fact, as I write this a book lies next to me that is on loan from an institution in Minneapolis. This “ILL” service, by the way, could be one of the library’s best-kept secrets (Shhhh).
Beyond resource lending services, our library also plays the roles of community center and meeting place. Lectures, concerts, movie screenings, even square dancing are all part of our local library world today. The expansive Roanoke Library System website is, of course, home to all sorts of information.
I’m such a regular library nerd that the staff at my local branch are my friends and they keep me in mind as books I might like come to their attention. I often make reservations for library books online and when the staff member calls to tell me the book is in she often adds, “Doc, I’ve got another one here you might like too.”
And like the little kid under my mom’s wing, I still love to just amble the stacks and peruse books at random. My son Adam says, “There’s something special about being physically surrounded by all those volumes, experiencing the sight, scents, and tactile feel of those bound avenues to other places, times, and people.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I’m headed to my secret library branch right now.
Johnny Robinson
