Are You Missing the Library?

I think about the library all the time. And when I say the library, I mean “my” library. I’m sure you miss your very own library. The thing about libraries is that they inspire a kind of ownership, among those who work there, and also those who visit.

I’ve been a library assistant at the Woodcroft branch of the Edmonton Public for going on 9 years. Even though I’m on temporary layoff right now, it’s still mine. It can be yours too, if you visit, but yah it’s totally mine. I think my co-workers feel similarly. Each of us feel as though it’s our library. I love Woodcroft, and I have felt loved there.

It’s not a perfect place, things get messy. Just like the novels on the shelves are full of complicated stories with endings that are in turn satisfying, dumbfounding, thought-provoking, disappointing, open-ended, flummoxing, strange, happy, unhappy, unpredictable, dark, light, open to interpretation, and where the characters may be unfairly thwarted, warmly rewarded, or anything in between, so too are the stories of the customers who come through the doors. In short, if you enjoy thinking about the vagaries, the joys, the quotidian nature of human existence, the library has been the place to work.

Are you also missing the library? Maybe it’s only now that it’s sinking in for a lot of us how much we miss the library. We worry that the library won’t be the same place after Covid-19, and it won’t. But that’s okay, because you know what? The library is a new place every day, always has been, and libraries exist because they’re questioning, learning places, moving, changing, reacting to the needs of the community, nimbly picking up on what the world needs and creatively responding to what is new and cool and fun and smart. Libraries are staffed by the most creative and compassionate people I have ever met. If I had to characterize library workers I would say that they are a quirky combination of compassion, intelligence, and creativity. This is my experience, anyway. Library workers are also amazing communicators, brave souls, who can respond to emergencies, random incidents, crowd control, difficult customers with aplomb and kindness. In the next breath, they can review a contemporary novel, recommend a cookbook, and answer an obscure reference or tech question. I’ve worked in many jobs in my life but I will never tire of this one.

Let me interject here and say I am not even close to great at my job — so many of my co-workers have a really amazing set of skills and I just sit back and am in awe of them most of the time. I’m not being modest; I’m quite good but it’s just the way things are. That said, I’m always trying and this seems to be the secret to doing the job well. Yes, I bring my own particular and quirky skill set to the job, too, and we all riff off of each other and some days, a lot of days, it’s the coolest thing in the world.

There’s so much I want to say about the beauty of libraries. I’m not yet mourning or grieving the closure of the library. I guess I’m busy looking to the future of libraries. And let me say also, that I have no idea what they’ll be like. That’s not even really my job. I’m lucky that I work where I have perfect confidence in our library system and executive to guide us through this (I’m just gonna use the word however tired we are of it) unprecedented time. The one thing I do feel convinced of is that libraries will persist, they will lead, and they will find a way to do the important things that libraries have always done: libraries share knowledge, they help us to learn and grow, and they will find unique ways to do it.

Do I sound like a library infomercial? I mean, it’s fine if I do. I find hope in libraries, in my library, and I hope you do too. I’ve been criticized in the past for making libraries sound like simply happy cozy places, but I know about the layers; I have lived the layers. I have dived deeply into those layers. In my branch we have a lot of at-risk customers and difficult conversations and tricky behaviours, a lot of really difficult and rewarding and emotionally intense moments every single day. But we are instrumental in guiding and helping and referring people or just being there for them. In fact, that’s what I miss the most. I’ve had conversations with some of my co-workers about this — that this is what we miss most. Helping people. Being there. Listening. Making whatever small difference we’re able to. We miss our people.

And this, too, I know going forward is what libraries will continue to do. Help people. I don’t know how, but I know in my bones this is what we will find a way to do.

So yah, I’m not going to waste time mourning what libraries used to be; I’m interested in seeing what we can share with people, how we can help them, and how we can contribute to their everyday lives now. Like, I’m interested, what do you need and want from libraries going forward?

My last two shifts at Woodcroft were evening shifts. The library was already closed to the public, mid-March. What seems inevitable now, the prolonged shut down, the long social isolation that we’ve all now experienced, were then still unknown, felt uncertain. During those last shifts my co-worker Tori and I both wanted to do something fun that might help with our social media, and she is a talented programmer, and hey, I can hold an iPhone, so we made a series of videos which sort of kicked off EPL’s very brilliant EPL from Home offerings. The whole list of story times is here. And check out Tori’s in particular. This was the first one we made. I can’t help but think libraries are going to be making some amazing digital content, ongoing, and how wonderful is that? Is this the modern day equivalent of librarians on horseback?

There are so many things to say about libraries. But I think right now it’s okay just to love them. One of my favourite writers (C.D. Wright) once said about the trees in the Ozarks, “the trees true me.” I would amend that to, “libraries true me.” Wright said of poetry that “the radical of poetry lies not in the resolution of doubts but in their proliferation, in an ongoing interrogation with what Roberto Juarroz called the poet’s one untranslatable song.” What libraries do is what poetry does: they engage in a radical and ongoing interrogation with the untranslatable song of the universe. They live with doubts, they are interested in the human condition, they are never indifferent spectators.

Libraries, too, are places of courage. In another context, another of my favourite writers, Leslie Jamison talks about empathy and says “we should empathize from courage” rather than from fear. She notes that empathy isn’t “just something that happens to us” but that “it’s also a choice we make; to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviours greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness even when I’m deep in my own.”

A lot of us library workers who have been applying for Employment Insurance, trying to figure out the ins and outs of that process, have mentioned that we now have a greater empathy for what our customers go through, whom we have regularly helped fill out government forms.

Maybe we’ll also have a better understanding of minor trauma, of the effects of extreme worry and self-isolation. We will listen to the sadness of others, having lately experienced some of our own. Maybe we’ll have more patience, we’ll be wiser. We’re waiting to hear their stories, again, to be there with them.

I keep returning to Leslie Jamison’s essay, “Layover Story” from her book, Make it Scream, Make it Burn. How will these words resonate in the library of the future? How will they play out? How can we put this graciousness into action now from 2 meters distance?

“This is how we light the stars, again and again: by showing up with our ordinary, difficult bodies when other ordinary, difficult bodies might need us. Which is the point—the again-and-again of it. You never get to live the wisdom just once, rise to the occasion of otherness just once. You have to keep living this willingness to look at other lives with grace, even when your own feels like shit and you would do anything to crawl inside a different one…”

And:

“Does graciousness mean you want to help—or that you don’t and do it anyway? The definition of grace is that it’s not deserved. It does not require a good night’s sleep to give it, or a flawless record to receive it. It demands no particular backstory.”

My theory is that we will be looking at our customers, each other, with more graciousness than ever before. We will be hearing their stories more attentively, somehow we will find a way that keeps all of us safe.

Somewhat related but did you read the article in the NYTimes about the restauranteur who shuttered her establishment? The articles ends poignantly, “So I’m going to let the restaurant sleep, like the beauty she is, shallow breathing, dormant. Bills unpaid. And see what she looks like when she wakes up — so well rested, young all over again, in a city that may no longer recognize her, want her or need her.” I was thinking it’s going to be like this for a lot of places. And I do like to think of my library having a little downtime, a little bit of a refreshing nap. All those books humming their songs, breathing, sighing. The light coming in that one high window in the afternoon, and resting its elbow on the fiction M-Z.

I know the light in my branch library like I know the light in my house. I know how it filters through the plants in the reading area on Sunday at about noon in the winter. In the fall it comes through the yellow leaves of the nearby trees and lands on the newly returned books in the foyer through the front door before we open. I remember all the times we gathered around the tables, peering through customers to look at the light coming in at the golden hour. Some of the sunsets! There are times in the summer when you leave the branch at 9pm and it’s still full of light. The joy of that. And in spring the way the light rakes over the books in the children’s section at dinner time. I miss the light but the light is still there, transforming everything it touches, waiting for us, graciously. The libraries are filling up on light, filling and filling, and when we show up with our ordinary sometimes graceless sometimes graceful bodies, when we show up with our stories, our wonderful delicate lives, and all that we have been through these past months, they’ll hold us again, somehow.

May 4, 2020