Libraries Will Take It

We Have A Hard Time Saying No

The other day, I mentioned the curious circumstance of libraries having Patron Groupies and I’ll get into that in more detail at some point.

But for today, I wanted to mention a specific story, but one that happens often in different ways across the board - and a story that keeps librarians getting up in the morning.

Recently, a long time patron walked into the library with a telescope under his arm. This is someone I’ve known for years, a decade. Someone who is a good man, and who we’ve watched as his health failed him, who had a rough time through Covid, but who has slowly begun to come back to us. Well traveled and brimming with stories, he’s been one of my favorite patrons, someone I consider a friend.

“I don’t use this anymore,” he told me. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be and it’s collecting dusk. I know you already have a telescope, but maybe the library wants two?”

We have a Library of Things at the library, and this is an exact sort of conversation that I’ve had with many, many dear patrons. Over a guitar. An ice cream machine. A 3-D printer. We have patrons come in with bags full of blank notebooks. Pens. A globe.

One brought me a rock from Spain. One donated a jar of pennies. We’ll be raffling off a patron-made book quilt.

And all this isn’t even counting the tens of thousands of book donations we get every year. Just this morning, a patron brought in exactly one book to donate. Last week, someone dropped off a hundred.

When something is precious to you, and you have no human to give it to, people will turn to the library. They will turn to the library because the library itself is precious, and because our footprint inside a community is grounded in trust and betterment. We serve to make this place better. Something that is important to a member of this community is, by default, important to us.

So yes. We will take those bongo drums that have sat in your closet all these years. Yes, we will give those puzzles a good home.

What will we do with it all? Well, who knows! We have craft swaps. Book sales. A sales cart. We have items in our collection that need to be swapped for newer versions. We have budding bakers and musicians and designers who are looking to try our cake pans and ukulele and wifi hot spot for the first time. We’ll do our best.

And so I tell the patron with the telescope that of course we’ll accept it. I can’t promise him what, exactly, the future of his gift will be, but whatever or however it ends up will be to the benefit of the library and to his community.

People trust us to take care of them, and their community, and so we will.

End-note: I feel the urge to contextualize this little story by saying that, yes, there ARE things we will not take. Mold for example, or books covered in mouse poo. VHS tapes. A box of old computer chargers. A board game missing the board. All things that have been left with us. We don’t want to turn anything away, but, well, sometimes… we have to.