You may not know this about me, but I have five library cards! That’s right: I have cards from the University of Idaho Library (where I work), Washington State University Libraries, the Latah County Library District, Neill Public Library and the Whitman County Library Rural Library District. I never can resist excess when it comes to libraries.
Here on the Palouse, we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of libraries. And I am luckier than most in that I get to be an active part of more than one of them. The University of Idaho Library, Idaho’s largest, has been my professional home for more than 15 years. As a reference and instruction librarian, I get to help all kinds of people: students writing papers on mixed martial arts, faculty researching whether animals are capable of lying (they absolutely are), staff members looking for classical music scores. People from all over the world reach out to us with questions on everything from Idaho history to magnolia cultivation (that one came from Leipzig, Germany). I help build our collections by buying novels, biographies, plays, poetry, documentaries and works on world history. And I work with classes and groups all over campus, from the Writing Center to the Student Veterans to the Native American Student Center.
All of the UI librarians work with different constituencies across campus, from undergraduate and graduate classes to student clubs and Greek societies. We have a hand in everything from geospatial data to digital humanities projects to workshops in our makerspace, the MILL. And, since UI is a land-grant university, our library is open and available to anyone in the local community, something that astounded me when I first walked in the library’s doors back in 1994 on my first visit to Moscow. Anyone who wants to can spend time browsing our collections, get a library card and check out materials from books to DVDs to government documents to LPs (if you’re into vinyl). It was that opennesss, that commitment to benefiting everyone, not just the campus, that made me think, “I want to work in this library someday.”
Across town, I also serve as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Latah County Library District. The board works with the director, Chris Sokol, and the LCLD staff to provide crucial library services at the Moscow Library and the six LCLD branches (Bovill, Deary, Genesee, Juliaetta, Potlatch and Troy). Each of these libraries is unique and vital to its community. The board gets to visit them all as part of our yearly meeting schedule, talk with the branch managers and Moscow staff, and hear what they’re doing.
And it’s a lot: picture books, storytimes and children’s programming like you would expect, but also ebooks and audiobooks, streaming video, research databases, STEM learning kits, talks on local history and other adult programming ... and my personal favorite, Repair Cafes! I volunteer to mend clothing and other textiles at these events that take place about four times a year, and it’s great to see people from all over town getting help fixing lamps, repairing jewelry, gluing broken vases, sharpening tools and keeping cherished items useful and in circulation. LCLD is the only Idaho library system taking part in this international movement, which makes me really proud.
Both of my Idaho library experiences give me a unique window into just how much libraries matter to all of us: to preschoolers, homeschooling parents, retirees, young adults, job seekers, K-12 teachers, undergraduates, independent researchers, language learners and passersby who just need to flip through a magazine while waiting for the rain to stop. And I haven’t even touched on the Washington libraries! So give all your local libraries some love: Just walk in (or ask for curbside delivery of materials if that works better) and use them. Don’t let me be the only one with five cards.
Smith is the humanities librarian at the University of Idaho.
