I have always imagined paradise

will be a kind of library

The other day I decided I needed a book at the Missoula Public Library. The online catalog had it marked “on shelf” so I stopped by after work on a beautiful early spring day. The MPL won the 2022 International Library of the Year award, because it is absolutely gorgeous. 

I can’t list here all the reasons the MPL is so wonderful, but here are two: the entire second floor is for children, and it has a discovery center, a comfy reading zone, and activity spaces such as a two-story, DNA-shaped climbing structure to help teach about the human body. My students and I got to help idea-create this DNA thing preCOVID. It’s mostly built and I can’t wait until it is revealed. The other feature that I love is the 4th-floor outdoor seating area. In the summer this is one of the very best places to spend a lunch hour.

Lunch in summer 2021, Missoula’s Mount Sentinel in the background. You are not allowed to eat in the outdoor seating area. I just, um, “didn’t know.”

So, I couldn’t find the book I sought. It was Joy Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave, housed in the poetry section, whose HAR zone was overtaken by the Jim Harrison collection. I asked the librarian, because I wondered about a memoir in poetry, but apparently it’s not about what you do in the moment, but who you are in general, that determines where your book ends up in the Dewey Decimal System. This seems wrong but anyway. I couldn’t find it. 

I decided to look up another book I kind of wanted, maybe it would be available? It wasn’t. But the library was warm and sunny, and a low buzz of voices carried along through the stacks. The parent of a former student said hello to me. Then the librarian offered to go look for the Harjo book on the return cart downstairs. I said okay and sat down to read an essay on my phone, which felt weird, because I was in the library and shouldn’t I be reading a book made of paper? A woman behind me was clearly doing some kind of research project, with binders spread around the table and a laptop open. She wasn’t reading a book made of paper either so I carried on. 

There are many reasons to spend time in a library besides reading print books, library ambiance being reason #1. Libraries are often the most magical place in a community. On my recent trip to Oregon I noticed a library in every small town I drove through. I even thought about taking photos of these libraries - there was one in Seaside, and Cannon Beach, and I know I saw one or two more in Washington. People need books! 

MPL reading area overlooking Hellgate Canyon. I confess to napping in that chair once.

When I was a student at Georgetown University, I liked trekking across the city to do research at the Library of Congress. It made me feel scholarly in ways that the regular university library did not. I enjoyed sitting at the curved tables with green-shaded lamps, pull cords and all. Getting there took a lot of effort and so I didn’t go often.

But one day many years later, I did have a thrilling LOC moment. In 2014, the Missouri Teacher of the Year and I were running around Capitol Hill meeting our elected people and midday meandered via the underground passageway over to the LOC.¹ We were wearing our Teacher of the Year name tags from the previous meetings, and the librarian we spoke to at the LOC saw them and exclaimed, “My mom was a teacher! I love teachers!” She took us on a spontaneous insider's tour of the cavernous reading room and the alcoved stacks. Then, she took us to the center, the spot behind the librarians' desks – you can see it in the photo below. In the very middle is a tiny hobbit door which leads to a tight spiral staircase descending into the underground control room. She took us down. This is where the book requests are received and fulfilled, and it is full of defunct dumb waiters and conveyor systems from times long past. No photos were allowed and I think she was bending the rules showing it to us. 

I stole this picture from the internet because my actual photo from the visit doesn’t offer a view of the hobbit door.

If you zoom into those archways on the right, you can see the stacks. Enchanting! I looked up the term “library stack” because I’ve always wondered why a library’s shelves are called stacks, and it turns out that it’s short for “bookstack” and these were originally built as multilevel, or stacked, metalwork shelves to save space as collections expanded. This reminded me of another awesome library I’ve seen, also with a story.

It is the mysterious Riggs Library at Georgetown. It’s hard to find, located on a weird half-floor in the first building constructed on campus. Pictures are available, and you can sort of see in through murky windows, so I knew there were old-fashioned metalwork stacks. My friends and I were always trying to get in there back in the ‘90s, but it was perennially locked, adding to the intrigue.

One day in 2017 I was visiting campus with my son, and I said to him, let’s go see if we can look at the Riggs Library. Old habits. We followed the stone steps up to the correct floor on the south end of the building. We found the door, turned the knob, and, LO. It opened! Of course we went inside immediately. I also incriminated two current students sitting on a bench nearby by commanding them to enter. They hesitated and I was like no, you don’t understand. You must go in! They obeyed. I climbed the spiral ironwork steps for a picture. 

The stacks: Riggs Library stealth mission

The Missoula librarian returned with apologies, clearly mystified by the missing Harjo title. I kept thinking how easy it would be to misplace a book in the stacks. Maybe it doesn’t happen often because library frequenters are responsible with books? But I suspect these readers are not a cut above, their lives likely polluted by overdue fines, entitled trespassing, and reckless lunching habits just like the rest of the populace.

Libraries, after all, are a place of all the people. They are full of ideas, revolution, dreams, stories. Jorge Luis Borges said, “I have always imagined paradise will be a kind of library.” Just so.

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I was thrilled when my 18-year-old son called the other day to say, “You’ll never guess where I am!” Answer: the Missoula Public Library. He was excited to tell me how nice it is there, and how glad he was to have gone in. He updated his card and borrowed two books.

1. There is a cafeteria in that passageway with the most phenomenal comfort food imaginable: turnip greens, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken.