Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. -- Anne Herbert, from The Whole Earth Catalogue, often quoted without attribution

The Jesuit Center at Wernersville is attractive as a site for a writer's retreat not only because of its quiet, holy atmosphere and my history with the neighboring Hain's Cemetery as a place of inspiration. There is also Wernersville itself, an example of small town America that still retains much of its nineteenth century character. The Wertz Mill is still there, but it's a sandwich and ice cream shop now. Many of the buildings on the South Mountain that were the health resorts popular through the 1920s still stand, although none functions as such. (The one that figures in my novel is operated as an addictions treatment center by the Caron Foundation and can be seen in the upper right corner of its web page.) And in the heart of Wernersville, within walking distance of the Novitiate, is an old institution in a modern building, the lovely Wernersville Public Library. 

I was there for a few hours yesterday and today as well. I used some of the local history collection as well as one of the five computers along the back wall. I use a standard desktop printer with my portable word processor, and I didn't bring it along on this trip. So I used the library's computer to read my e-mail and to print out some of the actual new fiction text and notes I wrote yesterday. 

I shared the row of computers with a college student who was working on a paper, a four-year-old who was happily using his Reader Rabbit CDs (with headphones to contain the music) while his mother prepared her resume, and a woman who had signed on at precisely 10:00 (the time the library opens) and was still surfing when I left at 2:00. (I peeked over her shoulder -- she was looking at medical information sites.) 

From time to time mothers (and at least one father) with preschoolers in tow would come by. This was not a strict silence research library, but a lively community library where the sound of childlike laughter was occasionally present but by no means intrusive. The children seemed quite at home in the stacks and and made their own choices, handling the volumes with care. It was the kind of youthful energy I don't get enough of these days.

Although I have an Access-Pennsylvania library card (by virtue of my privileges with the library system in the county where I live), no one asked to see it. I was afforded exactly the same hospitality and professional service that I had at the lovely O'Neill Branch of the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Public Library and the bustling Boston Public Library last August.

I had a teacher in college who regularly made fun of librarians, regarding them as sexually repressed termagants who didn't really want anybody to use the volumes because that would mess up their order on the shelves. I have since concluded that he had more sexual repressions than he would ever admit to, hangups that he covered with swaggery talk, and that he projected them onto the women he knew.

In my last twenty years of heavy library research I've used public libraries big and small, college and university libraries, even private institutional libraries. I've been a stranger in a strange land, and I have never been treated with anything less than extraordinary cordiality. Librarians have gone to heroic lengths sometimes to find me the best microfilm reader, give me access to rare manuscripts, fetch unprocessed archival material from deep storage. 

I salute them.