Opinion: Love for the library, in person or online

Published 9:30 am Friday, April 15, 2016

Libraries have been a recurring theme in a lot of my conversations lately. Where are they, should we highlight them in the Chamber of Commerce directory coming out in this week’s paper or the visitor’s guide next month, and if so, how much? And, behind that, just how important a part of the community is a library, anyway?

Extremely important, I say. Some of my first and best friendships started in libraries. I learned how to cook with a wok because of a library, got inspiration for dozens of stories in libraries and got pulled into my first community club because of an event at a library. I like to think that I learned a little bit about organization from both diligent searches and bored wanderings through the stacks. And, there are stacks.

Libraries are, if not cornerstones of their communities, at least part of the foundations.

So, yes, I value libraries, but it’s not as if I spend all my time there.

The truth is, I rarely set foot in a library these days, unless it’s for a story for the paper or a meeting, or to find an old copy of a book long out of circulation — “Dead Men’s Clothes,” for instance, about the WPA camp that operated near Carnation, or “Minding Our Own Business” about the Groshell family and their adventures in publishing the Valley Record in the 1950s.

An unusual program, like the debut in February of a documentary about a team studying the migration of a wolf, OR-7, from the Teanaway Pack in eastern Washington, down into Oregon and California, then back to Oregon to set up a new pack, will also get me there, and, for fun, the Sasquatch Seekers presentation last Thursday at the Carnation Library. That one was definitely eye-opening.

Mostly, I leave digital footprints in the King County Library System. I listened to more than 40 books last year, through the KCLS website. OK, it’s no record, but it’s more than I would have “read” otherwise, since I listened while commuting.

I’ve also used their (free!) database systems for research job hunting or writing grant applications.

No matter where I go, it seems I’ll always be at the library, one way or another.