Letter: Library as Enduring Memory

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To the Editor:

In the Dec. 28 news article "Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close," a librarian characterizes traditional libraries as "big, impersonal mausoleums." Surely that is a reference to the enduring stereotype of the hushing librarian, but it unfairly juxtaposes a new, friendly library with an old, mythically unfriendly one.

Among my most durable childhood memories are visits to the Mount Vernon (N.Y.) Public Library, financed by Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the 20th century, where a patron progressed from the children's room on the first floor up the creaky steps to a lofty rotunda embellished with walnut trim, a skylight and painted murals of medieval scenes. There lay the reference room and the fiction room — austere, yes, but that was part of the delight.

It is unnecessary to condemn the world contained in that library to validate new trends.

CLAUDIA J. KEENAN
Atlanta, Dec. 28, 2012

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