Library changes are signs of the times
As I walked into Helena&8217;s Jane B. Holmes Public Library, I was taken aback by what I saw.
Before my eyes were stacks of music CDs and rows of DVDs, just waiting to be checked out and enjoyed. Once I got past the electronic media, the books waited in the background.
That&8217;s a far cry from the libraries of my nerdy youth, where I would hang out after school while waiting for my mother.
At my hometown library, the closest anyone got to CDs were audio recordings of books. (I haven&8217;t been there in years, so I&8217;m sure it&8217;s much more technologically advanced now.)
I spent a lot of time wandering down the aisles of books, finding new authors to read and chairs to curl up in.
I&8217;m not used to the concept of libraries as media centers, so seeing Bruce Willis&8217; face on the cover of &8220;Live Free and Die Hard&8221; on the library shelf was a bit disconcerting.
Of course, that doesn&8217;t make it a bad idea. Eventually, libraries were bound to branch out.
As Library Director Victoria Ashford said, music and movies are what people are looking for, so that&8217;s what libraries have. That&8217;s what they have to do in order to survive, and that&8217;s fine. Maybe those kids that come in for the movies will stay for the books. Maybe.
Anything that keeps libraries running is great as far as I&8217;m concerned.
But I kind of miss the times when libraries were just for books, and it wasn&8217;t necessary to have a CD player or a home theater system to be entertained.
I&8217;m probably one of the only people out there that feel this way. Most people my age are creatures of the digital revolution. My fianc/ definitely doesn&8217;t agree with me on this one, especially since he&8217;s all about Bruce Willis.
Still, there isn&8217;t much that&8217;s more satisfying than checking out as many books as you can at one time-and then bringing them all back before the due date just to check out more.
Howard Lynn Tickle
Funeral service for Howard Tickle, age 52, of Ridgeland, Miss., was at 11 a.m., Monday, June 30, 2008, at Bolton-Letlow... read more