Love Your Library

Bookish Beck hosts the #LoveYourLibrary meme on the last Monday of each month. I discovered this celebration of libraries from a post at Scones and Chaises Longues. Since I am a HUGE fan of libraries I decided to join in beginning this month. For this first post I decided to indulge in a look back at my life in libraries. 

I have been a library patron since I was old enough to write my own name on my card (this was a requirement at the Omaha Public Library). We moved when I was ten and then I got to have two library cards: one for Brooklyn Public and one for New York Public. I worked in the school library when I was in middle school (we call it Intermediate School in NYC) and during my freshman year of high school. I attended New York University, where I also worked in the library, and one of the librarians there encouraged me to go to graduate school for Library and Information Science. I moved to Washington, DC and got my MSLIS from Catholic University. This was another city where I got to have two library cards: DC Public and the Library of Congress. After working in various special libraries I ended up moving to New Hampshire where I got a job (and a library card) at the NH State Library. My local library (which I visit pretty much weekly) is the Manchester City Library. 

I read quite a few books, and I look at a TON more than I read because I can do that for free from the library. I also get magazines, downloadable audiobooks, DVDs, and books on CD. It feels like such a treat to look through the new books  section (or the craft section, or the cookbook section, or ...)  and pull every book that appeals to me from the shelf so I can take it home and look at it at my leisure to decide if I want to read it (or sometimes to just look at all the pretty pictures in the decorating books).

I am definitely guilty of pestering my friends (the ones who are readers anyway) to use their public libraries. It is the best deal out there!