Why I love going to the library (virtual and analog)

My hometown library was three large rooms tucked into the city building at the heart of a six-block downtown. I used to walk there once a week after piano lessons and wait for my mom to pick me up after she got groceries.

I explored the shelves in different sections, but often ended up in fiction, where I found everything from dog-eared paperbacks like It's Like This, Cat to dusty leatherbound volumes of Dickens to (my favorites)Vonnegut, Bradbury and Heinlein. Books were places for me to go, experiences to have, and people to meet far from my parents' Iowa hog farm.

Back then, I thought of libraries as book warehouses. The old, white-haired librarian in my hometown helped me get the hang of using the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog. After that, I could navigate the world. Don't get me wrong, I loved television too. My parents often said they could either find me with my nose in a book or my face pressed up against the TV screen. Often, I was in front of the TV with a book in my lap.

Today, as a writing instructor and doctoral student, I have BSU's Bracken library bookmarked on my laptop. I learned in my master's program that a college library's online resources had to be my first stop in doing research. Okay, maybe I start with online resources (even, gasp, Wikipedia) but I cannot count on them to be credible or scholarly. I need a place to go where I can trust the information. Bracken's virtual and bricks-and-mortar is my space. If I can't find it there, I can get it from there through interlibrary loan.

There aren't any old white-haired librarians drifting around Bracken (think Ghostbusters or Music Man) but I can find someone to help me in the middle of the night in person or via online chat. And there are five copies of It's Like This, Cat down in the Educational Resource Collection.