“How much does it cost for a library card?” asked the eager Millcreek middle-schooler.
Excited to learn that cards are free, he translated that information for his immigrant mother, who then pulled out her identification so the teen and his two younger brothers could sign up for cards.
They would use the library to help their mom learn English, he explained with a grin.
Another time, at the same library, a neatly dressed woman gathered a week’s worth of newspapers and flipped to the “rentals/apartments” classifieds.
Discouraged when she couldn’t find a place to rent, she called 814-SHELTER, the number for Erie County’s coordinated shelter entry system. She got the answering machine. She had recently escaped an abusive relationship in another state and had quickly found two jobs in Erie. Now she’d be forced to sleep in her car again between work shifts.
She eventually found a temporary place to live, I recall, but I don’t know what happened to the Edinboro guy who needed to fax a form to stave off eviction. First, though, he had to use a library computer to find the form but he didn’t know how, because he couldn’t read or write. A library worker helped him get everything in order.
The public library is much more than a book repository. And the job of a library worker is more complex than being familiar with the Library of Congress classification system (which starts with “A — General Works” and ends with “Z — Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources”).
That’s why two current but related issues involving the Erie Public Library aren’t just about dollars and cents. These issues actually expose social justice inequities and make a mockery of government priorities.
The first controversy erupted when Erie County Council voted 5-2 on Oct. 17 to allow Gannon University to lease part of Erie's Blasco Library.
Eight weeks later, Erie County Executive Brenton Davis announced layoffs of library workers to save money.
What does it say about county priorities when Gannon, a private institution, can lease public property at below-market rates of $7 per square foot, at the same time Erie renters can’t find affordable housing?
What does is say about Erie County Council members when they admit that they haven’t used the public library for years? Do they know that Blasco and the county’s Millcreek, Edinboro, Lawrence Park and Fairview branches share resources with the six independent libraries in Erie County?
Do they know that in 1894 and 1895, Erie school directors led the fight for enabling legislation to allow Pennsylvania public schools throughout the commonwealth to establish public libraries?
“The basic philosophy which actuated the Erie School Board was its feeling that a free public library should become a feature of a free common school education,” Frank S. Anderson writes in “A History of the School District of the City of Erie, Pa., 1795-1970.”
All of these local libraries embody the ideals articulated by the Erie School Board and School Superintendent H.C. Missimer in 1895.
In a report to the state superintendent of public education, Missimer extolled a public library’s noble purpose. “(The) library is to give all the children, regardless of wealth, family, or position, the opportunity through reading, the intellectual and moral power which will make them citizens whose influence will be of value to the community in which they live, and persons of weight in that government. …”
Erie County took over the public library system from the Erie School District in 1979, but all public libraries remain committed to serving everyone regardless of wealth, family or position. The Erie library is especially suited to help refugees and immigrants new to Erie and, if desired, help “make them citizens” by offering resources to study for the U.S. Citizenship test.
In 2016, I wrote about a high school senior who came to Erie from China at age 2. He decided to do his community service hours for Collegiate Academy at Blasco Library because it was the place that helped him improve his English. “I grew up as an ESL (English as a Second Language) student. That is the reason I chose the library to volunteer,” he told me. Later that year, he was thrilled to be accepted to the University of Pennsylvania.
I am a public library fan for many reasons.
I’m an avid reader.
I’ve used Blasco’s lobby and small study rooms to interview people because it’s convenient and comfortable for people to come to the library to share their stories.
After I retired from the Erie Times-News, I served two terms on the Library Advisory Board.
And since 2018, I’ve been a per-diem library clerk.
I’ve worked as few as four hours a month. Yet that’s been enough time for me to gain a deeper understanding of why public libraries are so vital to Erie people, especially the poor, and also how hard full- and part-time staffers work.
If you can’t afford a computer, you can use one at the library. If you own a computer and/or a cellphone but have no Internet access, you can check out a T-Mobile hotspot. If your kids want to fish, you can borrow a rod. If you want to visit the expERIEnce Children’s Museum, the Erie Art Museum or the Erie Maritime, you can get a pass. If you want to start a vegetable garden to feed your family or a flower garden to beautify your yard, you can get seeds and starter plants at the library.
The library has technology to teach and thrill children, including Launchpads preloaded with educational games, and Wonderbooks, which allow young readers to build their vocabularies as they listen to stories or read them aloud.
In addition, the Bookmobile serves all of Erie County, from the John Horan Garden Apartments in the inner city to the Kennedy Hardware Store in Cranesville.
These services and resources are all free, and my list doesn’t even include the numerous free library programs supported by the Friends of the Library.
Gannon’s new Great Lakes Research & Education Center, proposed to be located inside Blasco Library, is part of its Project NePTWYNE (pronounced “Neptune”), which Gannon describes as an initiative “to reconcile the environment with the economy to preserve and steward our Lake Erie while simultaneously responding to community needs and growing the economy through job creation.”
Those who oppose Project NePTWYNE actually support the need for an environmental research center. Anna McCartney, who started a petition drive to persuade Gannon to rescind its lease, is a longtime environmental educator who frequently collaborated with Benedictine Sister Pat Lupo to educate young people and adults how to be environmental stewards.
But Blasco, the only public library in the city of Erie, is the wrong location for this new research center.
There is already a successful environmental center open to the public – The Tom Ridge Environmental Center on Peninsula Drive. TREC is equipped to welcome tourists, has research labs, features a landscape with native plants and is a stone’s throw from Lake Erie and Presque Isle Bay.
Before County Council approved the lease with Gannon, library supporters, including retired employees, warned that unwelcome changes to our public library wouldn’t end when Gannon, a private institution, encroached on Blasco, public space supported by public dollars, i.e. taxpayers.
Indeed, on Dec. 11, the Erie County Executive who engineered the lease with Gannon announced his plan to eliminate library jobs and freeze vacant positions.
Claiming that library usage is down, he said that library workers can simply move to other “high demand” county jobs. "There's nothing to say that a library clerk making $26,000 couldn't say, 'Hey, you know what, I've got a bachelor's degree in social work. I want to go work up at the jail making $78,000 or whatever it is with overtime,” he told the Erie Times-News.
The county executive should educate himself about why prison/jail jobs are in “high demand.” According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure. Over 70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth-grade level.”
The library connects Erie people with literacy programs, including United Way of Erie County’s Imagination Library, which provides free books for youngsters every month from birth to age 5. Experts know that when parents and caregivers foster a love for reading in children from a young age, they boost their chances to succeed in school.
To learn more about these library issues, check out the excellent opinion column by Mary Rennie, former executive director of the Erie County Library and former County Councilwoman.
To advocate for the library, join the Keep Our Library Public page on Facebook.
And if you are a person of faith, you might think about the library as I do, as sacred ground, where you will encounter moments of grace.
Once, I dashed into Blasco about 90 minutes before closing to do research for a story I was writing about the Tom Hanks’ movie set in Erie, “That Thing You Do!”
A man asked if I could help him. He had just finished 79 days in supervised criminal drug treatment in Erie; a staffer from the rehab center had dropped him off at the nearby Greyhound Station. He missed the bus, which would have taken him on an 18-hour journey, with three transfers, to a halfway house in Philadelphia. He had a water bottle but no cell phone or money.
The Greyhound office was closed and he would have to wait outside for the next bus, due at 2 a.m. By then, of course, the library would also be long closed.
I left a frantic message at the rehab center’s after-hours number and, fortunately, a staff member agreed to pick up his just-released client and drive him to Pittsburgh. I went upstairs to the library’s Heritage Room to work on my story. When I came back, the man had left me a note with a smiley face to assure me he had connected with his ride.
I’ve also seen gracious acts of kindness by library staffers.
At Blasco, they keep a basket of free hats and gloves at the checkout desk, with a sign reads: “Keep warm and enjoy!”
They assist patrons with intellectual disabilities to find their favorite videos or easy-to-read books.
They bring in granola bars and other snacks for people experiencing homelessness and hunger.
They’ve learned to treat all patrons with dignity and respect, thanks to in-service training and to the presence of peer counselors from the Mental Health Association of Northwest Pennsylvania at Blasco.
One year during in-service, staffers watched “The Public,” a film written by, directed by and starring Emilio Estevez. It’s a fictional account based on real-life examples of how libraries have become refuges for people who are homeless because there are no other public spaces for them to keep warm, read and use the restrooms.
Moments of grace happen at all libraries, not just Erie’s.
In Cork, Ireland, I was walking up a hill to visit St. Colman’s Cathedral and came upon the Cobh Public Library. The librarians told me that their building became a morgue after Germans torpedoed the Lusitania on May 1, 1915.
I got chills thinking about the young librarians who had become the keepers of this tragic local history, but that’s what libraries and librarians do; in addition to saving books, they preserve OUR stories.
Outside the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library in Charlotte, N.C., I took pictures of dozens of quotes from literary figures, including novelist John Grisham, who said: “The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards.”
Inside, I met a librarian in the history room who told me that Charlotte had a walkable neighborhood with lots of green space designed by John Nolen, an esteemed and pioneering city planner. Nolen had also created a plan for Erie in 1913 and, later, for Lawrence Park.
He gave me directions to the neighborhood Nolen laid out, where I discovered the Wing Haven Garden & Bird Sanctuary. Walking the pathways, I came upon lots of Catholic statuary, including one of St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardens.
Looking anew at my photo of St. Fiacre for this story reminded me of listening to Susan Monk Kidd read her novel, “The Book of Longings.” This story imagines that Jesus is married and that Ana, his wife, has written both of their stories.
To remember all the characters, plot twists and Middle East geography, I’d have to check out the audio version again or the print book from the Erie library.
But I do remember that Ana, a writer, is awestruck when she is able to visit the revered library in Alexandria. She describes it as “a holy of holies.”
Liz Allen is a member of the Sunday worshipping community at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and she writes for Emmaus Ministries.
