Quotes About Community

By that time, the library was awe-inspiring and a little scary. People had begun to believe it was a living thing—an enormous, infinite communal brain containing all the existing knowledge in the entire world, with the potential for the sort of independent intelligence we now fear in supercomputers.

Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory.

Unlike older generations, people under thirty are also less likely to have office jobs. Consequently, they are always looking for pleasant places to work outside their homes. Many end up in coffee shops and hotel lobbies or join the booming business of coworking spaces. Some of them are also discovering that libraries are society's original coworking spaces and have the distinct advantage of being free.

one more piece of the bigger puzzle the library is always seeking to assemble—the looping, unending story of who we are.

In truth, a library is as much a portal as it is a place.

Szabo frequently preaches the gospel of the library as the people's university.

Why would an old couple in San Francisco give to the Los Angeles Library to save the books?" one note read. "Well, [my] father collapsed and died in the LA Public Library on July 17, 1952. Heart Attack or stroke. I never found out which. Good luck with your campaign.

Libraries saw the Internet coming and extended a hand. First they set up computer stations for public use; then they offered free Wi-Fi. Now at Central Library and many other libraries around the country, there are kiosks where anyone can borrow a laptop or tablet computer to use for the day, just the way she might borrow a book.

The publicness of the public library is an increasingly rare commodity. It becomes harder all the time to think of places that welcome everyone and don't charge any money for that warm embrace. The commitment to inclusion is so powerful that many decisions about the library hinge on whether or not a particular choice would cause a subset of the public to feel uninvited

Interest in having a library in town persevered, and in 1872, an association formed to establish a library in the city. To raise money, the association sponsored a "Dickens Party," which partygoers attended dressed as their favorite Charles Dickens character. The party lasted for a full week. Hints to Horse-keepers and On the Sheep Industry were purchased with proceeds of the party.

Books invite all; they constrain none.

Libraries are physical spaces belonging to a community where we gather to share information. There isn't anywhere else that fits that description. Perhaps in the future, OverDrive will be where our books will come from, and libraries will become something more like our town squares, a place that is home when you aren't at home.

This is why I wanted to write this book, to tell about a place I love that doesn't belong to me but feels like it is mine, and how that feels like a marvelous and exceptional thing. All the things that are wrong in the world seems conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise: Here is my story, please listen; here I am, please tell me your story.

a brutal sense of loneliness, eased only by a place like the library, where lonely people can feel slightly less lonely together.

It declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and to what is still to come.

people of the book.

The publicness of the public library is an increasingly rare commodity. It becomes harder all the time to think of places that welcome everyone and don't charge any money for that warm embrace. The commitment to inclusion is so powerful that many decisions about the library hinge on whether or not a particular choice would cause a subset of the public to feel uninvited.

The library is a magnificent institution which nothing can hinder . . . except peanut politics

It was like everyone shared the same great realization: the libraries have persisted, and they have grown, and they will certainly endure.

Libraries are physical spaces belonging to a community where we gather to share information. There isn't anywhere else that fits that description.

Chief Aguirre said as we began to walk around the building. "Library users are eighty percent male, and librarians are eighty percent female, so that's something to keep in mind.

Over the years, he has become a sort of library himsel: He is the repository of endless stories about the library's most interesting patrons.

In fact, Perry was passionate, but his passion was exclusively for libraries, and he judged people by whether or not they shared his passion.

A library is a good place to soften solitude; a place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you're all alone.