John Grisham        

         This week, April 10 through the 16^th, is National Library Week, celebrating those literary behemoths that have been the epicenters of scholarship and knowledge from the beginning of time! OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but libraries are still pretty great. It makes me sad to go into local libraries and see the books wilting on the shelves while everyone makes beelines for computer stations. Perhaps they are using the Internet to research more books for their Kindles…one can hope.

            Despite it all, libraries soldier on and it is pretty cool that there is a week to honor them.  This year’s honorary chair is the mega-famous John Grisham, who has sold more than 250 million copies of his novels throughout the world. I can’t find out what John Grisham actually does as chairman, but his chair is honorary, so I’m thinking that probably means he does nothing. Except put his very serious and very literary face on PSAs that libraries can hang up, staring people down until they give a dollar to keep their local library open.

            Today, April 14, is support Teen Literature Day which means that libraries are hosting events to support YA literature. YA literature sometimes is quite good—Sherman Alexie writes really great books for teens about the Native American experience that stays grounded in race, but also transcends it—anybody who had pimples or was an outsider in high school should read him.  Maybe this day will promote more quality teen literature production from talented writers.  Too much of the literature for teens these days seems to revolve around finding a boyfriend or girlfriend, preferably a boyfriend or girlfriend that has magical powers, and is written in diary format, preferably including shopping excursions and/or talking about how the (female) protagonist thinks she looks fat.   

            Yesterday was National Bookmobile Day and Tuesday was National Library Workers Day. I didn’t know that Bookmobiles were still around (but they are—Audrey Niffenegger is chairman of this day!) and also awesome because they come to schools and other public places and are so transportable/multifunctional! Also, library workers are even more awesome than Bookmobiles because they put shiny covers on books, catalog books and help you find obscure reference materials on shelves when (and there certainly will come a when) the mighty Internet fails.

            Libraries started in Ancient Greece, but the oldest library in America is at Harvard.  A Massuchusetts clergyman named John Harvard gave 400 books to the university that eventually claimed his name.  Thomas Bray from England also made an old library, establishing free libraries in the colonies in the late 1600s. Ben Franklin created a kind of library in which members paid dues for book purchases called the Library Company of Philadelphia.  

            In the 1800's, public libraries came into favor in the U.S. when the idea of free public education for children became popular.  The first public library was established in New Hampshire in 1833. In addition, Andrew Carnegie, that famous philanthropist, built more than 1,700 libraries throughout the US between 1881 and 1919.

            So, basically, libraries and librarians deserve a week where everyone can stop and appreciate how great—and really important--libraries are. They are especially important in America, a place where the exchange of ideas, rather than goods, is increasingly becoming the currency. What better representative of the health of a country’s mind than the library, a public place for all to learn?

Sources and further reading:

http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html

http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/celebrationweeks/natlibraryweek/index.cfm