52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  Week #32  Theme - At the Library.

Libraries are BIG in my life.  The first experience... I wasn't even there.  We children had the measles and our mom went to the college library nearby and brought home books to read to us... Tom Sawyer, Uncle Wiggly,  Adventures of Billy Whiskers.  This was about 1947 or so.  A couple of years later we stayed in another town for the summer... a town with a real library, storytime and all (yes, the storytime where one time my little sister didn't wear her underwear).  I was almost 7 and devoured all the series books I could find.... Little House, Wizard of Oz, Raggedy Ann and Andy.  In 5th grade I got to be librarian for our grade and discovered Nancy Drew.  When we moved to a city with a Carnegie Library, we were regulars...4 kids carrying home stacks of books, then as teens, doing our research papers, etc.  As a young mother, I used the Book Mobile in the parking lot of the Safeway...quick in and out with a few paperbacks each shopping trip.  

Then I began my family searching and I can't count the genealogy  libraries we visited... city, county, state, national archives.  At least a dozen states in person, and more by correspondence.  I  viewed microfilms, microfiche, even a stereopticon.  Used card catalogs in drawers, old newspapers clamped together, shelf after shelf of DAR records, county histories. We were even admitted into a backroom in a West Virginia county courthouse where the librarians let us turn the pages of original county records from early 1800s. 

Now I benefit from online libraries for genealogy and am thankful for those who contribute their documents and trees so that all can glean more info.  County libraries are my go to for recreational reading... 63 fiction books read so far in 2022.   And all this may have led to the choice of careers for my daughter, who is an elementary librarian (now called media specialist,)  passing on the love to hundreds of children.