Bay St. Louis and Hancock Co. Public Library
Today was the start of the part of the trip that I have looked forward to because I am finally getting the opportunity to give a helping hand to my colleagues who work in a Katrina devastated library. After the disaster, our profession pulled together and did all sorts of fantastic things to help libraries who were wiped out by the hurricane. It’s one thing to assist by writing a check but quite another to be able to travel and volunteer in person.
I hope that the students came away from today with an increased awareness of the importance of the public library in most communities, and this one in particular. I think often, folks just take library services for granted and those of us who use academic libraries see them as a place to research and study….maybe not much else. But public libraries fill many important needs for their communities and today, Prima did a wonderful job of describing the essential types of services that her library (and thousands of other public libraries) provide. The fact that they could keep operating and fill such an important role to hurricane impacted citizens doesn’t surprise me. One of the reasons I was attracted to this profession was my admiration of the way libraries help shape their communities. I only have a tiny idea of how difficult it must have been for all of the staff to soldier on under such circumstances. I lived in Charlotte, NC when Hurricane Hugo hit. I worked for a home center company (like Lowe’s or Home Depot) and it was essential that we manage to get and keep the store opened so that people could get the goods required to function in a disaster. Hugo was a big mess, but nothing at all on the scale we heard about today. Hearing Prima talk about how her staff rose to the challenge and continues to do so made me proud to be associated with them all, if only by profession.
I’m looking forward to our service projects tomorrow, I think you all will find them to be rewarding.
Our student athletes and Linda McKay from the Bay St. Louis Library