In our Librarian Notices section of The Card Catalog, we post weekly testimonials, stories, and notes from a wide variety of librarians all over!
Meet the Librarians
Stacie Bean
A Humble Place – Okeechobee, Florida
Tracy Born
Living Books Rescue Preservation Library – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Ashley Borrego
Cornerstone Living Library – Lilburn, Georgia
Elizabeth Cunningham
Living Literature Favorites Libary, Texas
Sherry Early
Meriadoc Homeschool Library, Texas
Emma Filbrun
Ahaura, New Zealand
Sandy Hall
Hall’s Living Library in Georgia
Erin Hassett
Wattle Gum Library, Australia
Michelle Howard
Children’s Preservation Library in Michigan and Living Learning Libraries in Florida
Kathie Johnson
Neighborhood Children’s Library in California
Elizabeth Jones
Covenant Family Library, West Viriginia
Sara Masarik
Plumfield Living Books Library in Wisconsin
Robin Pack
Children’s Legacy Library in Tennessee
Mary Schubert
Pursell Schubert Legacy Library – Oklahoma City, OK
Kathleen Seeger
Living Education Library – Edgerton, Wisconsin
Amanda Smith
His Word Christian Library – Chickasha, Oklahoma
Kristi Stansfield
Maryland Living Books Library – Maryland
Jeannette Tulis
Green Door Children’s Heritage Library, Tennessee
Librarian Reflections
The Ark by Sherry Early
“I am preserving stories, what educator Charlotte Mason called “living books”. And although I am protecting the books from flood and fire, I hope, I am ultimately more concerned about pulling all of the good books that I can save out of the inundation of trash and twaddle and and pernicious indoctrination that I see all around me.”
Books By Mail and Me by Kathy Twitchell
“We live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I have owned more books than the tiny local public library for at least two decades. We rapidly outgrew their collection before the oldest of our six children turned ten. Because our town’s library service was so limited for so many years, we qualified for the state library’s Books by Mail program, as did the majority of smaller towns in the state. We have borrowed many hundreds of books this way. Because the Maine State Library is taxpayer funded, there was no fee for this service IF your town met the qualifications. If the town was not on the list, the service was not available at all.”
Why Libraries by Diane Pendergraft
In 1731, Benjamin Franklin founded a subscription library now called The Library Company of Philadelphia. It was established by fifty founding members who contributed 40 shillings each and agreed to pay ten shillings per year to maintain membership. According to the Library’s website, “All of the books the Library Company acquired year by year over more than two and a half centuries are still on its shelves, along with many others added since it was transformed into a research library in the 1950s … Nonmembers could borrow books by depositing their value as security ‘and paying a small Acknowledgment for the Reading’” (“At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin,” Edwin Wolf, p.3).