A friend shared this New York Times article where an archivist documents the history of a library.  Like the article’s author, my belief about the staying power of brick-n-motar libraries is that they will stay.  What they look like, though, as we change, and they change, I can’t fathom.  On to the article!

Photo courtesy of Benimoto, Flickr.

On a trip to New Hampshire, we dropped by the adorable and somewhat miniature Gleason Public Library. The creature above was accompanied by two or three other similarly puzzling statues. I assume they’re associated with a fable or children’s story, but I couldn’t determine which.

The animal in the photo is:
A.) Dog wearing a crow disguise?
B.) A rat doing the same?
C.) None of the above?

Your guess is as good as mine. A quick perusal of the library’s website did not lead to answers for me, but perhaps someone will stumble upon this blog post and shed some light.

Every summer my partner and I spend time in Peru, Maine with friends. Some years we take a little break from the eating good food made with love, the swimming in Worthley Pond, the game playing, and connecting with friends we see very rarely, to strike out in the car to town, one slow country spot or another. Often a farmer’s market. Sometimes a library.

The photo above is a display in the children’s room at the Paris Public Library. I love the gentle curve of this wall, how the picture books are arranged, bright flowers waiting to be plucked by children of all heights and abilities.

My cousin, a Brown University graduate, worked at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library as a student and so treated my mother, her mother, and me to tour behind the circulation desk and among the stacks. It wasn’t my first time in the library, one of my close friends from high school attended Brown and we once strolled through, visiting a desk assigned him where he’d spent many hours studying.

Some of my favorite Librarytour blog photos came from this run through the Rock, including this rainbow of book carts . . .