Warsaw Library Director Expresses Thankfulness For Communities Libraries
By Ann M. Zydek, Library Director
As a Hoosier, librarian and reader I am grateful for the efforts local communities made to erect libraries throughout Indiana a hundred years ago.
A Warsaw Daily Times article headline November 21, 1916 stated: “INDIANA LEADS IN NUMBER OF CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDINGS – Eighteen Have Been Completed during the Year Just Ending. – Sixteen Others, Including One in Warsaw, Are Now Under Way.” Henry N. Sanborn, Secretary of the Public Library Commission, in his annual report stated, “Indiana has more Carnegie library buildings than any other state in the union.” Locally Ezra Frantz, of North Manchester, was awarded the contract to erect Warsaw’s public library for $15,867.50 with the building to be ready for use by Dec. 1, 1916.
Like generations of readers before us, explore our library’s physical/digital collections and as winter settles in savor “words” and reading. In Gifts of the Spirit, author Philip Zaleski stated: “Reading is the art of welcoming other minds into one’s own, of making room for new ideas, foreign landscapes, unknown creatures, exotic dreams.” He shared that twelfth-century Chinese educator Chu Hsi, “saw reading as an inner discipline to sharpened intellect, deepened insight, and strengthened moral muscles.” Chu Hsi wrote: “You must frequently take the words of the sages and pass them before your eyes, roll them around and around in your mouth, and turn them over and over in your mind…only then can there be real understanding.”
Recently I read the touching debut novel “The Abbey: A Story of Discovery” by non-fiction author James Martin, S.J. He introduces Mark, a former architect, turned handyman at a Pennsylvania abbey, who wonders how his life got off track; a divorced mother, Anne, who struggles to make sense of her son’s death; and Father Paul, an abbot who with other monks lives secluded from the world, except when selling homemade jam and holding retreats. Through simple words and actions the flawed characters help each other discover friendship, hope and healing.
I also just finished “The Bookshop on the Corner” by international bestselling author Jenny Colgan. In this uplifting tale Nina Redmond pairs a reader with the perfect book, first as a British city librarian and then as the owner of a mobile bookshop called “The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After” in the Scottish countryside. As a “literary” matchmaker, using stories to transform lives, Nina gradually opens up and discovers her own “Happy-Ever-After”.
May you enjoy reading always!