Preview Pages from Heart of the Community: Libraries We Love
From the introduction of Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love
"This celebration of libraries began one bright spring morning in Stone Ridge, New York. My husband David Levinson and I were driving to his father’s summer home in the Catskills, along our usual path on Route 209 along the Roundout Creek in the Hudson River Valley. As we passed through Stone Ridge, a village noted for its old, stone houses and strictly enforced speed limit, David (who is also my business partner and president of Berkshire Publishing) pointed out that one of those houses was the village library. He then mused about how libraries were often among the grandest buildings in town, architecturally striking, and valued by their communities. As publishers, our thoughts quickly turned to books, and David said that he didn’t think he’d ever seen a book that celebrated the unique qualities and contributions of America’s public libraries. I couldn’t think of one either, and as soon as we could get to a computer, we went looking for such a book—and found none. Queries to librarian friends also turned up a blank.
We realized that this was a book we had to do. Within a week, we had a plan, and not long thereafter an advisory board to help us decide exactly how to tackle our project. We came up with a list of criteria to consider in selecting libraries for inclusion in the book, decided that illustrations would play a major role and that the book would have to be in full color. Soon after, we took a field trip to Chatham, New York. The stunning Tiffany stained-glass window of Chatham’s library provided a beautiful illustration, along with those from our own town’s Mason Library (seen on the book’s cover), for our preliminary designs.
When we talked to our local library about the project, word quickly spread. An architect from the southwest wandered into our office one day asking if he could buy a copy, saying he’d heard about the book at the library (sadly, we didn’t get his card, so we hope he will come across the book on his own). And when I mentioned the project to a cab driver in Chicago, he extolled the virtues of his hometown library, in Ghana, and talked about how the librarians were, first and foremost, storytellers."
To read the full introduction, download the PDF (2369 KB).
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