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What’s in a Library?

This week I wrote about proposed budget cuts that would all but eliminate services provided by the South Dakota State Library. It’s pretty hard to be an “unbiased” reporter on a topic I feel so strongly about.

I still have the first library card I ever got in my own name. From the Java Public Library, long since gone the way of many, many rural libraries in small towns, my name is handwritten on the tiny yellow square of paper. I also keep my South Dakota State Library card in my wallet. I received the new card in my married name right about the time we got the devastating news that the State Library was closing and the book collection would be dispersed to other libraries in South Dakota.

Libraries –and of course, books –shaped my childhood. The particular smells of different buildings, full of books, are etched into my memory. The sound of silence; that particular quiet only belonging to a library, still echoes in my heart. The faces and voices of librarians who read to countless kids for “story hour” and helped me find “just the right book” are still dear. The sense of adventure about to be found on a trip to the library, just waiting behind a perhaps unexciting book cover, still sends a thrill through me whenever I see a shelf full of books. Story, both fact and fiction, is woven within the fiber of my very being. Story, we are told, is vital to our human existence. Knowledge, we are told, is power.



Living 90 miles from Pierre as a child, my family made regular trips to the South Dakota State Library. When we couldn’t go in person, we ordered books and they arrived in the mail, brown packages bringing the scent and essence of the library right into our home. I can still picture the spot on the shelf where I found a beautifully illustrated book about all the breeds of horses as an eight-year-old horse crazy girl. I can picture the spot in a different aisle where I chose books to read for research on the British monarchy for a school project as an early teen. Interlibrary loans enhanced my upper-grade research projects; thanks to our state library I received recordings of Allen Lomax’s cowboy and folk ballads and other folk music, and rare copies of first person accounts of the American Civil War.

As a home-schooled student, and again as a home-schooling parent, my local libraries, and our state library, enhanced my and my children’s educations. We’ve spent untold hours reading and listening to books. A trip to the library was a childhood highlight for me, and for my children. Thanks to Libby, provided through our state and local library, it’s a rare day that one or more of us isn’t listening to an audiobook, learning something new about ourselves or our world, experiencing the magic of being in another world for a season. My daughters now attend school in Bison, South Dakota, where they continue to benefit from services provided through the State Library.



Here in the northwest corner of South Dakota where our population levels are below the definition of “rural” and more accurately defined as “frontier” levels, we depend on the assets that our state library brings to our local libraries and communities. I’ve heard story after story from our pioneer past about how deeply books were treasured, and how welcome a traveling library or a new box of books for a country school were for our ancestors. Resources may not arrive in Lemmon, Bison, Faith or Buffalo via horse-drawn wagon or saddle horse these days, but digital age resources such as summer reading program support, librarian education and training, Libby and more are still treasured and appreciated. The South Dakota State Library continues to help open the doors of knowledge and portals to new horizons and magical adventures to young and old.