Well,
it's simple really.
I
suppose I would have been around 5 years old
when my mom first introduced me to a library,
back in the early fifties. It was a rather
sombre and imposing building of stone, very much
of the Nineteenth Century. This was the Carnegie
Library and it stood, quietly back from the
road, in pleasant surroundings, at the entrance
to our local park: West Park., Hull.
Several
steps led up to the arched foyer which hid the
turnstiles which guarded entrance and exit and
beyond which the silence was inviolate and all
encompassing. The turnstiles were situated one
either side of the librarian's sanctum, which
was darkly timbered from floor to
ceiling.
Believe
it or not, the keepers of this retreat were
severe ladies with bunned hair and only a rare
smile. Not inaptly, interaction with these
book-keepers was occasioned through a grill
similar to those which so commonly graced
railway ticket offices in the heady days of
those other iron maidens.
Needless
to say, access to books was strictly limited and
controlled by issue of tickets which allowed 1
fiction and 2 non-fiction books, or 3
non-fiction books for a period of up to two
weeks. Children (under 14) were strictly limited
to use of the children's section where,
depending upon age, of course, the staple diet
was of Enid Blyton, Captain Johns, or for the
more serious, the classics.
Although
I spent countless, quiet, hours adventuring
across oceans, fighting Red Indians, jousting
with my fellow Knights, solving cases for Simon
Templar, or marvelling at encyclopaedic accounts
of science and invention, never once did it
occur to me that I might one day become the
keeper of the keys to such treasure.
Those
stern colleagues of yesteryear are long gone, as
sadly (or perhaps not) is the building itself,
but this site is named in some small, and I hope
not too trite, acknowledgement of what they
gave.
