Dymphna (DJ) William’s Guest View on the library deftly exposes the rich value a library offers to the community. Food for the soul comes from the library.
The library sets the table with a smorgasbord of infinite variety. If an adequate smorgasbord includes a dish of pickled herring it tells me smoked salmon with all the accompaniments will soon be on the way. By pickled herring and smoked salmon I anticipate a variety of books.
A library is a smorgasbord of books.
Dymphna informs us that many use the Internet to find books. For me a walk through the library doors is like a trip inside the handheld Internet.
Instead of scrolls, the library presents with attentive signs inviting curiosity welcoming exploration. Stepping into aisles I can examine titles, feel the weight of a real book and enjoy pictures while examining pages of choice.
Titles and interest spark curiosity while pulling me along, grabbing books until full arms require an unloading trip to a nearby table.
Inside the corridors of the world I visit Switzerland, then Ethiopia and pause to think of “Breaking the Code of Einstein.” Maybe I could understand a little of that.
While musing on that subject my eyes focus on one grand temptation of one book filled with California authors. Imagine Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Bret Harte, Jack London and Mark Twain all in one book.
Still with my arms heavy with books the pull of discovery eggs me on to find an irresistible title, “San Jose and Its Cathedral” authored by Marjorie Pierce who lived in Hollister. The city of my birth causes me to grab that book.
Meeting Amanda and Myles O’Connor, who acquired his wealth from the California gold mines—they were the original builders of O’Connor Hospital. I am further grateful to learn that my high school of Notre Dame was the O’Connor mansion gifted to the nuns newly arrived from Belgium.
Loaded with books I left eager to enjoy the richness of actual books, which is never the same as scrolling a screen with images soon to be lost in the air.
Mary Zanger
Hollister
