Roots

It is intriguing to trace a local Library’s beginning. That beginning is often as a makeshift center run by a few volunteers in some already existing space, the collection being of not many books, but enough to establish a small lending Library. Even today, we see pop-up Libraries. There is one at the front of Laird Hall, one at the front of the Rewind Shop in Export. The history often continues with how that particular service evolved into so much more, managed by a professional staff of trained librarians. The subject has been treated before in this column, even in a larger historical context. For an example of the larger historical context, there is the story about Benjamin Franklin’s Junto Library in Philadelphia in Walter Isaacson’s “Benjamin Franklin: an American Life” (2003), wh…