The Library as Place: New Arrivals - March 7, 2025 →

Brown & Dickson reminiscing on the old Central branch of the London Public Library after a new collection fell into their possession: 

“The current upswing in Canadian spirit, and these well-met first editions, brought to mind our early days at the old London Public Library. It was a burgeoning regionalist’s paradise—-and what is Canadian spirit if not regionalism?”

Regionalism. To love, appreciate, explore, and celebrate the places we call home. The library has always been at the heart of all things local; stocking regional collections, maintaining the historical archives of communities, and being the third place where people come together to share in common interests while building bridges between the less common things we share.

“We explored zines, newspapers, posters, and ephemera from our unexpectedly bright and interesting local art scene’s history. For both of us, it was a step beyond the background of our home berths into a larger, cosmopolitan community weirdly just at our doorsteps.”

There’s something to be said about the broad swath of content that a library’s collection contains. There’s something on the shelves for everyone. And, when this statement isn’t true in practice, there’s something behind a closed door that is easily accessed by a friendly librarian. 

“Its collection was a classic mix of arts and humanities. It was curated with deep care.”

Most of all, it’s the diversity of what the library contains, and the infinite possibilities of the the space and its resources facilitates, that makes a library a very special place. It helps to create something, out of nothing:

“That library made us writers.”

Then there’s the space itself. The carefully selected furniture, to fit into the meticulously designed environment; a combination which instantly transforms The Good Room into The Room of Requirement:

“We’d spread all this mind-blowing stuff out on those handsome wood tables and WRITE AND WRITE AND WRITE. We hunkered down with the naive verve of teenagers discovering greatness in their own city, and do our best to create something, anything, that could merit inclusion in that cannon. Hours would go by. The small, poorly stocked coffee shop in the basement provided mediocre sustenance. Librarians sometimes got excited about what we were doing, and popped over to set an Anne Carson book on our piles, saying, “I think you might like this.””

The library as place is unique in our society today. It is one of the last truly public spaces, for the public good, where everyone is welcome and where everyone can transform the space into what they need for themselves in a given moment. For some, the library is a place to be, for others a place to become, and for book lovers like Brown & Dickson and myself:  

“That old library taught us how to simply be in books.”

Growing up I didn’t spend much, if any, time in the old Central branch of our public library. I was too young to venture there myself, and our family’s branch of choice was one closer to home. I can only recall visiting the old, historic Central branch once or twice in my life as a young undergraduate student. This is a shame, because I would love to, “remember what the rain sounded like hitting those huge windows,” in the old Central branch, the calming nature of the sound, and the experience it cemented in memory to be relived each time I were to “sit down with a good book and discover something new about [myself] and [my] world.”