The Questioning Librarian

Last week I attended a meeting of the local historical society. There was a wonderful meal followed by a talk by a local historian about a park in the area. When he stood up to talk, and I saw his topic was a park I'd never heard of much less been to, I immediately began to think of how bored I would be. I was delighted to be proven wrong on that account; I hardly noticed that an hour had passed before he finished, and everyone else in attendance seemed to have enjoyed it as well. For many, the history of the park, which started out as a trolley park, must have brought back memories of their youth. At least one person talked about how their class always went to the park at the end of the school year, and how they looked forward to the rides and the experience. Some of the readers may remember that my first professional job was working as a genealogy reference librarian, overseeing a collection of local history and genealogy resources at the Uniontown (PA) Public Library. While...

I have an unfortunate habit when it comes to the written word. Not only do I acquire more books than I can expect to read, I tend to let magazines I subscribe to pile up until there is nearly a year's worth; I then, sometimes, start to read them one after another until I am finally caught up. I'm attempting to get better on both accounts, mostly to diminish the amount of things sitting gathering dust in my apartment. All this is a long and winding path to get to the fact that I'm currently working through several years of old Astronomy magazines. I no longer subscribe or purchase that magazine, not because I don't enjoy it but because there isn't enough time to keep up with every magazine I'd be interested in reading, while still being able to read the books I choose. In one old issue, at the beginning of 2011 (yes, they have piled up for quite a while!) the author wrote about what we can look forward to in the next decade as far as space missions. It really wa...