Vermont libraries recently received their largest infusion of federal money in decades. Fourteen public libraries will split nearly $16 million in grants. They will fund infrastructure upgrades in a state where half of library buildings are more than 100 years old.
But today's libraries offer a lot more than books.
Recently, reporter Erica Heilman stopped in at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier to learn about the role that libraries play in communities.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Erica Heilman: This is the sound of the children's section of the Kellogg-Hubbard public library in Montpelier at 3:15 on a Thursday:
[Many children talk at great volume]
Erica Heilman: This month alone, in a Vermont public library, you could attend a banjo meetup, an advanced beginners Italian conversation club or a paranormal investigation of the Fox Room at the Rutland Free Library.
You could also spend the whole day at your library reading about snakes, and no one's going to ask you for money or ask why you're there or when you'll leave. And for some reason, these days, this seems positively subversive.
I talked with Carolyn Picazio, the Kellogg-Hubbard Library director of library services. I asked her, "Who comes here?" What followed was the following:
Carolyn Picazio: We have grandparents or parents, new parents often, coming in for story time.
We have people who are working remotely, who don't have a co-working space or maybe live in a tiny apartment.
We have someone who lives in a group home who needs support that they're not able to live on their own, and they come in multiple times a day to use our public computer. So that person is sitting on our public computer with headphones on, like jamming out to music videos on YouTube.
We have library donors who have lived in the community forever, who are now volunteers who are coming in to pick up books to take with them to the local day care and offer story time surrounded by little children out in one of our member towns.
We have folks who are unhoused, and it was cold this morning, there was a hard frost, and they're coming in to warm up. Sometimes they're coming in to push chairs together and rest.
We have young kids coming in to play games and to study, to connect with other kids.
We have people coming in who are avid mystery readers, and they're in my colleague George's book group.
We have dedicated newspaper readers that come in here, and they sit in a comfy chair right in front of the heater in the reading room and open the newspaper, and they've been doing that since time immemorial, every day, like clockwork.
One person who comes in and is trying so hard to manage their life independently and their finances and their housing, and they're dependent upon state and federal assistance, and they ask us questions all the time about the state of the government, and are their benefits secure, and are they going to be able to buy groceries next month and pay their rent? Is their SSI check coming?
Erica Heilman: You're like a priest. You're like a priest and a bartender and a caseworker. And if I come in with a weird inquiry, you have to keep a straight face, and it's a secret thing between us. Whatever it is I'm looking to know, you're going to keep it on the down low.
Carolyn Picazio: Absolutely. We just we do a little bit of everything, and what you borrow is your business, and really your business alone.
Erica Heilman: Why does it matter that there's a place that belongs to everybody and that you don't have to pay three bucks for a cup of coffee to be there? Why is that important?
Carolyn Picazio: I think that it's incredibly important to be able to go to a space where no one has expectations of you. Nobody owns the space, because we all own the space. And I think that there is an unfair and inaccurate perception right now that libraries are some sort of bastion of liberalism or progressivism politically. And I don't think that that is accurate.
Everyone is welcome here, regardless of their point of view. This is, I think, the place for civil discourse.
Erica Heilman: What do our towns look like without a library? What are we missing?
Carolyn Picazio: If this library weren't here, we would have people who wouldn't understand where to go to get benefits or services. We would have people who are out in the cold. We would have children after school who are latchkey kids or who have no place to go because after-school care costs. We would have people facing even greater isolation than they do now — senior citizens and young people and children who don't understand the world around them or can't connect to their community.
What if there was a purely economic divide to who could access information and who can't? You can read a book because you can afford a book is a terrible world to live in. You should always be able to explore and understand and discover and educate yourself outside of the realm of the school system or incredibly expensive higher education system.
As a member of the community, as a member of society — which we all are, whether we like it or not — having an informed, connected, educated and peaceable and civic community is of tremendous benefit to all of us, even if you're not buying into it yourself, personally. Having these things exist around you have impact on your life that improves it.
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