I've known about this memoir about growing up in Bridgewater, Massachusetts (at the turn of the twentieth century) for some time. Many in my adopted hometown had told me about it and I finally got around to reading it just as I was moving out of Bridgewater after 27 and a half years.
When I arrived in Bridgewater in 1997 one of the first things I did was to get a library card. Shortly after that I gave birth to my only child with whom I spent many hours in the library, and reading books at home together that we checked out. I also served for three terms on the Board of the Bridgewater Public Library (one as President). Therefore, I especially enjoyed reading about Rich's love of the same library. The Library, in fact, was also the place of the author's "first paid job".
The town, it seemed, had allocated a sum of money to be used for cleaning and refurbishing the Public Library. The two librarians, Miss Lucia Christian (Adults) and Miss Rachel Crocker (Children), considered it essential that in addition to the necessary painting and floor finishing, every book in the place should be taken down and dusted.
In those days the shelves were closed to the public. If you wanted a book, you told the librarian about it, and she went and got it for you, while you waited outside the carved wooden fence that separated the sheep from the goats. The shelves came very decidedly under the category of Sacred Grouind, available only to the librarians or their duly empowered agents and assistants and jealously guarded from unlawful hands and eyes. There was no random and casual browsing by goats, who if they did nothing worse, could surely be counted upon to put the books back in the wrong places. Under this system some books weren't even touched, let alone read, from one year's end to the next. It wasn't very surprising or unnatural that during that time they collected quite a coating of dust. And who better could be found to cope with the situation than the little Dickinson girls, who in addition to being Reliable, were Readers and Respecters of Books, and who, moreover, could be expected because of their tender years to work for much less than a regular cleaning woman would?
We were paid, I think, five cents an hour, which seemed like the wealth of Croesus to us.
From there the author describes the additional benefits of working in the library "turning us loose in the library was like turning an alcoholic loose in the wine cellar...those five or six weeks of dusting books contributed more to our so-called education than sixteen years...of school attendance". By stopping to read the books they were dusting Louise and Alice learned that not everyone held the same opinion about everything "you could believe anything you wanted to! You didn't have to accept what anyone, even teachers, told you!" Quite a heady lesson that we'd do well to remember a century later.
And that's not all! There was more exciting library work for Louise and her sister Alice as they got a bit older.
The following summer, Miss Christian and Miss Crocker were obliged for personal reasons to take their two weeks' vacation at the same time. ..Faced with the the necessity of leaving their sacred trust in untested hands, they thought of the little Dickinson girls...We went into the library for a week or so to learn the ropes; and then Miss Christian and Miss Crocker took off, leaving us in charge.
Dickinson goes on to describe how she and her sister stamped out books, collected fines, and "frowning at anyone who raised his voice above the lawful whisper". They also determined on their own to "give people not what they wanted to read" but what Louise and Alice determined they should read "for their own good". And so we see why libraries should be run by actual librarians, and not school children, no matter how reliable they might be.
