Library's centennial sparks memories Library's centennial sparks memories (September 23, 2005)

Scrapbook going on display to honor library's long history in Mountain View

By Molly Tanenbaum

Saturday's Mountain View Public Library centennial celebration will give community members the chance to be a part of history. Festivities will commence at 10 a.m. in Pioneer Park with a ceremony and tree dedication presided over by Mayor Matt Neely. The event will last until 4 p.m. with music, refreshments and story time, among other activities.

Photographs from the day will be placed in a memory book to honor the occasion, alongside remembrances from the library's many longtime visitors. The book, to be kept in the second-floor history center upon completion, will contain anecdotes from staff members, parents of children who have attended story time, and other longtime library visitors, said Amy O'Connor, library assistant heading the memory book project.

"The families of a lot of these kids have been really enthusiastic about contributing to it," O'Connor said.

Susanna Raj, who submitted her reminiscences to the book, believes the project serves an important purpose for the community institution.

"Every library should record its patrons' memories so that it can look back and feel proud, judged, amazed, humbled, embarrassed and hopeful, just like we all do when our families bring out [our own] memory books," Raj said.

Camille Yost and her husband Mark raised their four children with frequent trips to the library. Her children are grown up now, but they still enjoy visiting the library when they come home, Yost said.

"They always find a friendly place and someone to greet them by name, no matter how long the time away," she said.

Judy Jenvey Zellers recalls visiting the library as a child and leaving notes for a friend inside books, hoping no one would check them out before the friend discovered them.

"My children now participate in the wonderful summer reading programs, and the librarians are as helpful as ever," she said.

For some, like Seetha Nachiappan, the library has been much more than just a place to check out books. Nachiappan recalled how much at home she felt there after moving to Mountain View from India one year ago.

"Moving to a new country is always a little stressful initially. One's whole support system is thousands of miles away," she said. "So I turned to books to tide me over. When I stepped into the Mountain View Public Library, I was amazed at the wide collection of books they had. It was a voracious reader's dream come true."

Nachiappan has also taken advantage of the knitting club held at the library, which has helped her form a social network in her new home.

"The time spent learning how to knit was also time spent meeting new friends," she said. "The people, books and knitting are what makes the library one of the happiest places to be."

Many contributors to the memory book were grateful for the library's continual technological upgrades.

"Our very first access to the Internet was at the Mountain View Library," said Raj. "The services and experiences are getting better every year."

The library, which first opened in 1905 through a Women's Club petition, suffered extensive damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It was moved to a temporary facility before finally arriving at the new Franklin Street location in 1997. Many programs and services have been added throughout the years, including the Bookmobile, Teen Zone, and a self-checkout system.

The technological advances have left some visitors, like Janet Per Lee, nostalgic for the paper sign-out cards once used to check out books. These cards gave each book a history, and Lee loved perusing the paper slips for previous readers and to find out how long it had been since someone had last read the book.

But Lee has adjusted to the times. She has begun to take advantage of many different resources the library has to offer, including its CDs, DVDs, and books on tape.

These things, according to Lee, are, "all extraneous to the original mission of libraries but, in my opinion, such wonderful ways to reach out to more people, enrich life, and broaden one's horizons."

Lee especially appreciates how the library has changed from a place to quietly read or study in solitude to "a community gathering place, a welcoming center for all cultures and languages."

Though she misses the paper checkout cards, Lee has found her own secret way of communicating with fellow book borrowers by often sticking a shopping list or a postcard between the pages of a library book for a future reader to find.

"If you find a book with a postcard sent to me from Abby or Mom or Grace, it's my little 'Hello' to you. Pass it on," she said.

E-mail Molly Tanenbaum at mtanenbaum@mv-voice.com

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