This Is Where You Belong Author Letter To Librarians

A Note from Melody Warnick: THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG
During my years on the board of the Ames, Iowa, Public Library, we had an annual ritual of passing around the
American Libraries magazine with the Hennens ratings inside. I hadnt been living in the Midwest for long, and the
names of the champion communities, places like Cuyahoga, Ohio, and Champaign, Illinois, filled me with dreamy
longing. What were these towns like? I wondered. How can I end up living there?
In a restless decade spent moving cross-country three times, Id come to understand that apart from local donut
quality, libraries are the most reliable indicator of how well Ill like a place. That in fact a town with an excellent
library is almost always an excellent place to live. Now, having spent the past few years writing This Is Where You
Belong, a book about how we put down roots and fall in love with where we live, Im ready to state that anyone
whod like to feel happier in their hometown would do well to look toward the library.
Volunteering, for instance, gives you a greater sense of purpose and meaning where you liveand it happens to be
a need at most libraries. Participating in local government heightens your engagement in your town, and wouldnt
you know it, libraries burst with information about voting, running for office, or joining the library board.
It was the library under whose auspices I first marched in a town 4th of July parade, and it is the library where I
regularly run into people I know, cementing the relationships that are vital to our social capital in a place. When
youre new enough in a city to not know anyone at all, libraries tend remedy that too. At the Ames Public Library, a
stranger overheard me talking about my impending move to Austin, Texas, and couldnt restrain himself from
telling me hed just moved from Austin. I really miss it, he said.
Dont worry, I assured him, youll love it here soon.
In their seminal Soul of the Community study, the Knight Foundation discovered three qualities that encourage
residents to feel attached to their cities: social offerings, aesthetics, and openness. Libraries have those in spades.
What else is a library but a hub for social activities? A gorgeous community centerpiece? An equal-opportunity
provider of access and encouragement?
In many cities, online event calendars have replaced the paper-strewn bulletin boards of yore. Not at libraries,
where corkboards still proliferate with old-fashioned flyers about concerts and fish fries. If you want to find out
whats happening where you live, you go to the libraryoften to discover that whats happening is happening at
the library. My daughters and I have spent many summer afternoons watching movies in library auditoriums with
paper sacks of popcorn, or sitting crisscross applesauce on fraying carpet while visiting authors cast spells with
their stories. Even the shabby libraries were beautiful, and the underfunded libraries (and which arent?) were
welcoming.
In 2013, Redbox, OCLC, and the Project for Public Spaces cooperated on a program offering grants to libraries for
placemaking projects. The resulting music festivals, movie nights, kayak rentals, community gardens, fitness
classes, and picnics may seem far afield from the original mission of libraries, but only if you forget that libraries
are the most natural community hub most towns have. Connecting residents to each other and to what they love is
as integral, I believe, to the mission of libraries as the books are.
Each time I move, I feel a pang of nostalgia for the library Im leaving behind. And yet of supreme comfort is that
every new city has had its own library, a temple of stability amid the chaos of transition.
For a little while on move-in day, I leave the boxes and go visit the library. Inside, among the stacks, it always feels
like home.
Melody Warnick
THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG: The Art & Science of Loving the Place You Live
Viking | On-sale June 21, 2016 | 9780525429128 | $26.00

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A Note from Melody Warnick: THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG

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