In honor of National Book Month.
I saw the headline and was intriqued. Photographing libraries around the world. Massimo Listris's work pulled me in. I looked at every image, in awe of the beauty of libraries and the world of books.
Stiftsbibliothek, Kremsmunter, Austria, a monestary library built between 1680 and 1689.
photo by Massimo Listris, from his Photographing Libraries series. See them at:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/photographer-travels-globe-capture-worlds-slideshow-wp-151728478.html"This photographer has an incredible body of work after traveling the globe to capture images of some of the world’s most beautiful libraries. Massimo Listris’s 30-year pursuit has taken him to the likes of medieval chambers and 19th-century wonders. In some images, rich mahogany lights up rooms, and in others, grand statues, globes and ceiling installations capture the eye. The photographer, from Florence, Italy, said that everything about these grand venues attracts him — from the simple smell of dust, leather and wood, to the pleasure of opening an aged book (Caters News)."
Looking through the Massimo Listris series took me back to my childhood and my learning years in college and beyond. I grew up in libraries, loved them, loved books, wanted to devour them all. I remember thinking as a little girl in Rochester, New York, and later when I studied at Wheaton College (MA) and at the University of Wisconsin, that I would never be able to read all the books the libraries held or absorb all the knowledge they contained. But I loved the feeling of being in a library. Reading and research on a computer doesn't hold a candle to that experience.
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| Trinity College Library, Dublin. |
Closer to home, I think of the historic Carnegie Libraries. These libraries dot the American cultural landscape and are worth a dedicated photographer of their own (see below for the architecture of some of them). What a treasure the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie bequeathed to us! He started building libraries in Scotland, where he was born, then built at least six public libraries in the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, area, his adopted home town, the land of steel mills and heavy industry in his time. Architectural critic Patricia Lowry wrote, "To this day, Carnegie's free libraries remain Pittsburgh's most significant cultural export, a gift that has shaped the minds and lives of millions."
On the eve of a new century, in 1899, the Carnegie foundation greatly increased its funding for more and more libraries. This increase coincided with the rise of the Women Clubs movement and the emergence of women social reformers like Jane Addams in every city and town across the land.
These women, many the first generation of college-educated women (imagine!), had few opportunities outside of teaching, but they searched for a life of purpose. They found it in turning to public service and strengthening communities from the bottom up. Women were always the pioneers and leaders in social reform in America, although when men took over, as in the Anti-Slavery movement or the Progressive era, it was the men who made the history books.
As Carnegie made more funding available, women stepped up to organize local efforts to establish libraries for all communities, including African-American communities. This convergence of Carnegie's philanthropy and women's social activism, a story that deserves broader telling, produced beautiful libraries for millions of Americans.
By the 1930s, a total of 2,509 libraries were built. Their impact on young minds is beyond measure. Most still serve as havens of learning in communities large and small, in towns,villages and rural outposts, and most remain handsome structures.
So many writers, like Maya Angelou, remember the influence these libraries had on them. “A library is a rainbow in the clouds,” Angelou said, recalling the time she was a little girl, abused and mute, refusing to speak, who found a haven, a save harbour, in her school library in a little town in Arkansas. No doubt it was women who made sure that town had a library.
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| In praise of Libraries
“You never know what troubled little girl
needs a book,” Nikki Giovanni wrote in one of her
“Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free.
A great library is freedom,” Ursula K. Le Guin asserted
in her beautiful essay on the sacredness of public libraries.
“When a library is open, no matter its size or shape,
democracy is open too,” wrote Bill Moyers
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Here in northwest Ohio, we are fortunate to have the Toledo/Lucas County Public Library and its many branches. My kids and grandkids have benefitted from having such a great library system close at hand.
Alas, it's also true that the older they get the less they use it in favor of their smart phones and online research, homework, and social media. I think it's a shame, but my grandkids think I'm just "old fashioned."
On the other hand, libraries have been on the front lines in responding to these changes. Now we can take advantage of the fact that they are wired, their collections digitized, and their myriad services easily accessible online. My friend Judi, at the wise age of 83, has books, videos, and those wonderful PBS Masterpeice series sent to her home regularly. She's also a big fan of Tom Hanks and the library has sent her every movie he's ever made. The Library makes her life, and the lives of many seniors, fuller, happier.
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| Our Toledo Public Library, Main Branch in downtown Toledo, Ohio. Exterior, grand hall entrance, stacks. |
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| The Library of Congress. Three buildings, the oldest the Jefferson Building, one of the most beautiful buildings in DC, and the newest the Madison building, where I worked in the NAACP Anti-Lynching Campaign papers. |
Near the Library of Congress is the Folger Shakespeare Library, an elegant white marble building honoring Shakespeare and his works. The Tudor-style library is regal, as is the theatre. I love that the building is extensively ornamented with inscriptions by and about Shakespeare. I remember lots of plays, events and poetry readings at the Folger Shakespeare. 
Libraries in other US cities stand out as well. The iconic New York Public Library, with those large Lions standing sentinal at the entrance, is one example. The reading room blew me away. I thought I had been transported to an ornate European castle. "This is a LIBRARY?" I remember thinking. This library, like most others, has grown, expanded, and changed over the years. It is now wired, digitized, computerized, but its mission remains the same, as does the unforgettable beauty of its original building.
I visited the Boston Public Library when I was a student at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. Impressive. It too has grown and changed with the times, but like other libraries it has accommodated fully to the computer age. Our modern libraries have made the world of books and manuscripts, videos and digital materials more accessible than ever before.
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| Boston Public Library. |
At the other end of the country, there's the University of California at Berkeley Library. It shines brilliantly on the classical campus, well used and well loved. It brings back memories of a visit to my dear friend Doris a few years back. We took a wonderful stroll on the campus, my first time there. As we entered the Library reading room, we were greeted by that wonderful sculpture of Mark Twain, looking thoughtful and happy.
America's libraries, from sea to shining sea!
It might be easy to take these august Cathedrals of Learning for granted, with the younger generations spending less time in the buildings themselves, plugged in as they are to their ever-upgrading tech devises. Still, I hope millennials and future generations appreciate their legacies. Libraries belong to everyone, and they continue to educate and inform, to beautify and honor our cultural landscape. We need to be mindful of their value, and support them however we can, through levies, donations, and active involvement in the world of knowledge they preserve and so generously share.
Some sources and readings:
* Book of Kells, at Trinity College Library, Dubin, Wikipedia "The Book of Kells (Latin: Codex Cenannensis; Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais; Dublin, Trinity College Library, MS A. I. [58], sometimes known as the Book of Columba) is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Britain or Ireland and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from both Britain and Ireland. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is a masterwork of Western calligraphy and represents the pinnacle of Insular illumination. It is also widely regarded as Ireland's finest national treasure."
* On the importance of libraries to African-American writers, and to all writers: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/11/18/maya-angelou-library/ . "It is amazing, for me, to have been taken to a library when I was eight. I had been abused and I returned to a little village in Arkansas. And a black lady… knew I wasn’t speaking — I refused to speak — for six years I was a volunteer mute. She took me to library in the black school. The library probably had 300 books...The books were given to the black school from the white school and, often, there were no backs on the books. So we took shingles, cut them down to the size of the book, got some cotton and then pretty cloth, and covered those shingles and then laced them from the back, so that the books were beautiful. And those were the books she took me to see. She said, “I want you to read every book in this library.” And she did, and never stopped reading to her dying day.
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* On Carnegie Libraries, Wikipedia:
"Most of the Carnegie library buildings were unique, constructed in a number of styles, including Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance, Baroque, Classical Revival, and Spanish Colonial. Scottish Baronial was one of the styles used in Carnegie's native Scotland. Each style was chosen by the community, although as the years went by James Bertram, Carnegie's secretary, became less tolerant of designs which were not to his taste. Edward Lippincott Tilton, a friend often recommended by Bertram, designed many of the buildings. The architecture was typically simple and formal, welcoming patrons to enter through a prominent doorway, nearly always accessed via a staircase. The entry staircase symbolized a person's elevation by learning. Similarly, outside virtually every library was a lamppost or lantern, meant as a symbol of enlightenment./ Carnegie’s grants were very large for the era and his library philanthropy is one of the largest philanthropic activities, by value, in history. Small towns received grants of $10,000 that enabled them to build large libraries that immediately were among the most significant town amenities in hundreds of communities."
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