What a library ought to be . . .

While doing some research into the Harlem Renaissance recently, I discovered an article that deserves mention: Sarah A. Anderson's “ ‘The Place to Go’: The 135th Street Branch Library and the Harlem Renaissance,” (The Library Quarterly, 73.4). Not only does Anderson discuss librarian Ernestine Rose, a white woman who made a genuine, as well as risky effort to serve the Harlem post-WWI black community, including and perhaps especially the community’s creative element — the artists — but Anderson also presents an environment that nurtured and supported the creative energy of Harlem. Anderson’s account, however, is also an appeal to anyone and everyone who’s ever appreciated a library.

Reading about the 135th Street branch library and the activities that took place there reminded me of what a library used to be, or ought to be. Anderson took me back to the days of my first library card, the card-catalogue, and the cozy feeling of sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor surrounded by other thumb-sucking, blanket-toting kids as we all listened, spell-bound, to the soothing voice of a hero—the librarian. I have always harbored a fantasy of a life surrounded by books, silence, and little else, and so librarians are romantic figures in my mind. Ernestine Rose, however, necessarily lived an active, highly social existence as head librarian of the Harlem branch and impressed me as far more than a hero; Rose was a Goddess! And Anderson very apparently agrees, although in addition to naming Rose’s numerous, brave, and magnanimous accomplishments as if it were all in the line of duty, Anderson also offers information on conflicts that Rose encountered, perhaps even caused. There weren't many; in fact, it seems as if Rose's few professional/political stumbles all involved DuBois and that it is likely DuBois, not Rose, was at fault.