A Library is Many Things (1)

Thanks, Bob Moore, VSB administrator, for sending me this one: in a blog entitled Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving a Wider Audience is a collection of letters from notable people that include E.B. White, Isaac Asimov, and Dr Seuss. At the request of the public librarian anticipating the opening of a new public library in 1971, 97 children's authors and others wrote notes that invited the children of Troy, Michigan, to the wonderful worlds of reading and libraries. This treasured collection is posted as "A Library is Many Things." 

For many of our children here in Vancouver, the love of a library and reading is engendered in their experiences in our school libraries; this joy extends naturally to a lifelong love of reading and learning as well as a deeply-held respect for all libraries as a powerful resource for ensuring our belief that educated and informed citizens are essential to building and sustaining democratic societies.  In forty years since these letters were written, a lot has changed ... in libraries and in the world beyond.  What endures is the principle that takes form as a centre from which learning and reading emanates in whatever new forms these take -- and good stories well told.