Library growth speaks volumes
Library's growth speaks volumes
By Paul Erland
"Man, lots of times I wish I could just start back in school, from about the sixth grade. Man, I'd be the last one out of that library every night." - Malcolm X.
A library can change a life. It can kindle a lifelong love affair with books, and though the Good Book says that there is no end to the making of books and that much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh, that's just one man's opinion. In books is the record of all that man has done and said, and if, as they say, history repeats itself, then it is incumbent on every man, woman and child to have a familiarity with the public library.
The Williamson County Public Library System makes the written wealth of the world available to citizens through a countywide network of libraries. There are branches in the Bethesda, College Grove, Fairview, Leipers Fork and Nolensville communities. A beautiful and stately building on Columbia Avenue in Franklin houses the county's Main Library, which encompasses a local history/genealogy department, Civil War, African-American and local authors (some 400 of them) collections, young adults' and kids' departments, and a large reference department. Altogether, the main library and its branches carry over 182,000 volumes (and counting). The system as a whole enjoyed a 9-percent growth in circulation in fiscal year 2006.
While there is much that is old in the library, there is much that is new, which is to say that the library has fully embraced 21st-century technology. All the county's libraries in the system offer free wireless Internet access; system-wide, there are about 100 public-access terminals. The Library's Online Public Access Catalogue is open to anyone. And through a new online subscription service, MyLibraryDV, library patrons can access from home classic movies and TV shows and watch them on a computer or laptop which can be connected to a TV. (Call 615-595-1243 for more info.)
The Library offers regular programs for kids and young adults, lectures, computer classes, genealogy workshops, and musical and storytelling events from time to time. It hosts book groups at all branches. Book<>Connect is a new discussion group for singles. "A Foreign Exchange: Examining the Role of Global Perspectives in American Culture" is a lecture series sponsored jointly by the Library and O'More College of Design and featuring a variety of artists from other countries on the exchange faculty at the college.
Volunteer opportunities abound at all the libraries, and, indeed, the splendid system enjoyed by the scores of thousands of patrons today was born and nurtured by volunteers long ago. The original building, established in 1928 in the Masonic Lodge on Second Avenue, was an all-volunteer library. In 1937 it moved to a location just off the square, and, in a ceremony attended by the mayor and the county judge and enlivened by the playing of the high-school band, it was "presented to the county," and an official librarian was installed. In 1948 it moved to Fair Street, where it stayed until 1980, when it moved to a one-story brick building at Five Points and current head librarian Janice Keck came on board.
As Williamson County boomed, the Library outgrew that space, and in December 2003 it moved again, to its magnificent 50,225-square-foot current home on the former campus of BGA. Since then the circulation has grown to five or six times what it was four years ago, Keck says; the Main Library and its branches can count over 50,000 regular borrowers.
The beautification of libraries may seem to some to be an extravagant or wasteful thing, but such sumptuous surroundings are altogether appropriate to the lover of books, who will agree with the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray:
"It seems to me that one cannot sit down in that place (a library) without a heart full of grateful reverence."
The Main Library in Franklin is at 1314 Columbia Avenue. Call 615-595-1240. Visit www.lib.williamson-tn.org.
Call 615-595-1243 for more information about events.