A key to time and space

Submitted by Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter

September 17, 2015 5:00 p.m.

I am time traveling in the newly renovated Fernandina Beach library. My relationship with libraries started when my high school library opened a door onto the universe for me. I went to school in a small town in Michigan and I stress the word small. There were 59 students in my graduating class. The library wasn’t big but there were plenty of tables for reading and it was easy to check out books.

Library-PDFWe had American and English literature classes but often read only excerpts. The library gave me the whole book. I read classic American authors such as Steinbeck and Twain and contemporary novels and plays. I read the supposedly “hot” books and learned that sometimes you need experience to understand hot books. I read my way through classics such as The Divine Comedy and learned that the human imagination was better at hell than heaven.

In college, I worked in the new acquisitions department of the graduate library. That gave me an appreciation for the physical essence of a book. Since it was a big university library, we received the materials from all over and our department catalogued them until the library could make a decision on purchase. From The Village Voice newspaper to a huge annotated Alice in Wonderland, all manner of acquisitions came through our department.

I loved the library building itself with its slightly hollowed out steps and dark brick exterior. The stacks elevator was not for the faint of heart nor the claustrophobic as it was about the size of a refrigerator. For one of my courses, I went to the Rare Book room to read books printed on paper so thin you could almost see through the page. You could imagine Gutenberg at work.

After such a long struggle, it’s gratifying to see our new library. It’s a pleasant open space for reading, using the computers, meeting with others. However it still needs your support for books, furniture, electronic databases and the like.

I believe libraries are important to a free society and remember an incident confirming that belief. One afternoon at my local library in Maryland, I saw a young mother with a son who was probably 7 or so. He was querulous, asking why they had to be in the library. She said to him, “Because you have to read.” I can’t think of a better answer and I can’t think of a better place to do it than the library.

Evelyn McDonaldEvelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.