I grew up in a rural area in Connecticut. The library was our primary source of access to the outside world of places, people, and ideas. Our library was donated by Andrew Carnegie and named after Mark Twain who lived in our town for many summers. To this day, a dominant authority figure in my life was the librarian whose often conflicting mission was to promote a love of reading in every human being and simultaneously protect each book as though it were her only child. Only by strict adherence to her code was one able to take out any books, take out more than the "limit", or finally graduate from the child book-only pink card to the adult card, a major rite of passage and access to a bigger world of ideas. She was organized and busy, but always had time for a verbal book report from any one, as she used the Socratic method of questions to get us to think about what we had read.

Through her contagious love of books, my life was dramatically changed.

I know this is happening as we speak in libaries around the world. And, of course, on the Internet.

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