2003-10-15 - 10:47 a.m.
Part of the reason I want to be a librarian is that I love books. Our apartment is tiny, but full of bookshelves. One of the things that stung the most about moving was sorting out which books needed to be boxed up and stored. I love words, written words, paper, and the whole package of books.
Another reason is that I love to sort things. Matt calls it my obsession with putting things in other things, but that's only part of it. I love to spread things out, sort them in a way that makes sense to me, and store them where I can find them again.
I remember the library of my elementary school vividly. It was in the middle school, which was connected to the elementary school. As a result of my high reading comprehension level, I was given access to the whole library in third grade, which was a privelege that I have always been grateful for. That's when I really fell in love with the card catalog, and the Dewey Decimal System. Thanks to Dewey, I didn't need to know an author or a title; I could find books about subjects I was interested in by just going to a certain shelf and browsing. I loved horses, and I can tell you to this day that books about horses and other domesticated animals are in the 600s, 631 for horses. Paranormal stuff is in 0 to 100, and I read a lot of nightmare inducing ghost-stories and alien encouters from those shelves.
You get to know the librarians, and they were happy to know me, I think. I got out one book, the true story behind the Misty of Chincoteaque, so many times that when it was to be discarded, the librarian kept it aside until I went to the library again. "Here," she said. "This is going to be discarded, and I know you love it, so I want you to have it." I still have that book, even though it's up in Jenn and PJ's attic at the moment.
Last night I dreamt of libraries, because I was thinking about them so much. I guess I have some work to do - I need to get this ball rolling.
