Places I Like to Write: Libraries

By Sharon Mack
iBerkshires Columnist
03:37PM / Sunday, May 03, 2009

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PITTSFIELD, Mass.

Libraries. I never knew there was such a thing until the age of 7 and the bookmobile came around. We lived in a small rural town in Ohio full of farms. Open meadows, pastures, barns, flocks of geese and ducks, both wild and domestic, floated in the ponds and streams.  

Next door to our house was a small church. One day a big white van pulled into the parking lot. My brother, Patrick, and I watched as lots of our neighbors — adults and children — entered and, when they left, the van pulled off. Not until a neighbor, Mrs. Means, a first-grade teacher at our elementary school, knocked on our door and invited us to come with her to the bookmobile the next visit, did we have any idea what it was all about.

I was in awe. Books, books, books; I was only 7, but I could read way above my level. I went nuts. I signed up for my first library card and immediately took out three books. I became a voracious reader. I read everything I could get my hands on — poetry, fiction, non-fiction in all kinds of genres (although I had not heard the word genre yet). If I heard my teacher speak of a book, or saw something on TV that came from a book, I requested it. And I began to write. Poems at first, then little stories. First I mimicked what I read, and then little by little I branched out in my childish way. Anyway, my parents thought I was brilliant.

Berkshire Athenaeum   Pittsfield's public library One Wendell Ave. 413-499-984

Libraries. Later when we moved to the Baltimore suburb of Reisterstown, Md., and I was in my teens, I discovered "real" libraries. Reisterstown Library, the libraries in my schools and later Columbia Library. At 7, my favorite books (and not the edited insipid versions they now offer our children) were "The Secret Garden," the "Dr. Doolittle" series and "Anne of Green Gables."

Later, at age 14, it was "Gone With the Wind" and then romantic historical fiction of any kind, and at 16, I discovered Taylor Caldwell, William Faulkner, James Joyce and Louisa May Alcott — and my all-time favorite, mysteries. All the while I continued to work my hand at writing.

Libraries. Libraries like the Berkshire Athenaeum here in Pittsfield, and the Jonathan Edwards Library at Berkshire Community College are a wealth of information and books. I first discovered them as a non-traditional student at BCC, and they now have something they didn't have back in my young years: computers!

Jonathan Edwards Library Berkshire Community College 1350 West St. 413-236-2150

I love to go into the quiet, do my research using a combination of the Internet and reference books, and if I can't find it on my own, the staff at both libraries is there to answer any questions I might have, and to help me with my queries. Their patience is endless, and it doesn't seem to matter which librarian it is, they're all the same: Friendly, smiling, welcoming!

Libraries! I can't imagine what we would do without them.

Sharon Mack is a member of the Berkshires Writers Room and is working on a mystery novel. This Part 4 of a six-part series about her favorite writing spots.

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