April is National Library Month. If you haven’t visited your library in a while, this is the perfect time to do so! You might be happily pleased to find out all the services and programs offered for patrons from lap babies through senior citizens.
Libraries connect people to information, to entertainment, and to each other. They build community, and that’s something we all need. So please take the time to tell the library staff how much you appreciate them.
On a personal note, our Natchitoches Parish Library has been a life saver many times for me. The bookmobile kept my love for reading nourished at my rural school and at home during summers. Another memory from my childhood, was being able to visit the old library building on the river bank, you know with all the windows facing the river. Talking about excitement, I needed books for a science project about the heart. Of course I found a lot more books to read such as a delightful series about being a candy striper at the hospital. Then there was the time when we were setting up and furnishing a new school library when the gracious library personnel stopped in town to serve our school as we were not able to serve our students for a few months. During these difficult economical days, our library allows us to check out books online as well as bookmobile stops throughout our parish. I could go on and on about how important our library was and still is to me.
I would like to close in reminding folks of the sad quandary we find ourselves in on April 25th. While we need Parish roads fixed where our vehicles are not destroyed daily, we still need all the programs our libraries offer. Let me ask the powers that be if they truly have searched for different ways of fixing and maintaining our roads, other than taking away our means of maintaining our libraries? Are you able to assure folks that our roads would truly be “fixed” to last longer than a few months?
My fear is that we would see Robin Hood days where the evil sheriff would take away from the good people ( libraries) to build up coffers of another entity (roads). Where is our Robin Hood who might work for the betterment of both?
We need better roads. We need to maintain our libraries. We need both. Isn’t there a better way to do so?
Virginia Lloyd
Retired Library Media Specialist
