In the morning of June 27, 1998, due to a storm, the New Haven River overran its bank and pummeled the small village of Vermont. For the villagers, it was really a disaster. But what really put the villagers of Vermont into the deep abyss of loneliness, according to Chris Bohjalian, a resident of Vermont village and a contributor in Reader’s Digest, was the lost of their village library—a library that used to be the haven most especially for Vermont literature. The loss of their library, according to Bohjalian, had also become the loss of one of their niche for communion.
With the villagers of Vermont, I also believe that library is a treasure. It is a resository of knowledge, wisdom, history, culture, belief, way of life, and most especially, of relationship—be it a reader-book relationship or reader-reader relationship. In connection with this, in our ‘age of internet,’ library still remains as one of the few places that can bring us together.
Given this reality, as readers, how much do we love our libraries? Do we really hunger and thirst for the gift of library to us?
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