I think it’s easy to take libraries for granted.  When I was young, I had no conception of how much work went into creating each of the thousands of volumes I was so accustomed to seeing on those rows and rows of shelves.  As I write this, I’m sitting in our campus library, my chair tucked away between shelves of science texts.  There are more on this floor alone than I would ever care to count, and yet, I imagine, for each of the authors represented here, the publication of their texts–whether it be the huge garishly colored “Guide to Protozoa” or the long rows of “Methods in Enzymology” volumes–represented the culmination of a tremendous amount of work.  I imagine each of the authors at least allowed themselves a contented smile on publication day.  Each of these volumes has so much work, so much patience and so much pride embedded into them, even though some of the topics may be obscure and esoteric.  Each of these books, someone out there is proud of them.

On the second day, the library book sale is lonely, picked over, the long tables mostly empty, the remaining books collected together in piles and rows at the ends.  I had come here the day before, spent little, but had walked out with much, several books I had been meaning to read, and now here, like a chance meeting on the street, here they were, selling for almost nothing.  I needed a box to get them all back to my apartment.  But today, the second and last day of the sale, I walk through, and where yesterday the room had been full of people, some carrying a few books under their arm, others walking awkwardly under all of the weight, today there is almost no one.  I browse the stacks, and pick out a few interesting looking books.  I then look around for the books that look least likely to sell, the lonely homeless books, a collection of poetry by someone I had never heard of, a book of world war two stories, a scuffed and warped horror anthology from 1980, and I pick them up, pay my two dollars, and walk out feeling satisfied, the book itch stratched at least for now.