Home Library Service strengthening roots
Kensington Park residents Ian and Dorothy wrote to City of Burnside CEO, Chris Cowley, to give feedback on the Home Library Service.
Chris said that the lovely note "reinforces the importance of our Library service and the unique way we deliver them in the City of Burnside".
Here is the letter that Ian penned:
Thumbing through my tattered ancient encyclopaedia to a page providing a very brief idea of what a library is, the 102 words published provided me with two surprises. The first unexpected wonder was, that unknown to me the first library was at Nineveh in around 2,500BC. The second pre-Christmas cracker treat informed me, that the first public library was opened at Athens in 330BC. In the latter case the custodians of the library books might not have trusted the public enough to allow borrowing of the books. These printed pages for reading were for referencing purposes ONLY.
Fast forward to around 1946/7 a period when most of the British public were living in peace, where the n eds of the British population were partially met via the rationing of many essential foods and materials. My wife, I, my siblings, and our parents lived through a period 1945-1955 in what could be termed as a strangulated method of living.
At my age of 9-10 some boys used their imagination to quickly become a Scotland Yard detective. Requisites were a notebook, a magnifying glass (part of a broken bottle) and imitating the plain clothes policemen of that period by smoking a cigarette positioned at the corner of a mouth. The cigarette was made from rolled toilet paper filled with dried leaves from a bush my mates and I unanimously named WILD WOODBINE. The increasing heat inside the cigarette would occasionally hurriedly force insects from this homemade fag and risk their death by falling to the ground. 75 years later I have noted insects falling from leaves upon a tree and surviving their fall. Their usually ultra-light weight allows them to drift downwards and effortlessly alight upon the ground.
Another magnet of joy for me during my early post-war life was a visit to a local library with my recently de-mobbed father from his REME battalion. Our local library was not only a storage area for oodles of books, but it was a space in which I am sure my father acutely sensed the peace within this place offering a comfortable browse while standing. Chairs were a scarce resource enabling readers pre-WW2 to sit in relative comfort. I wandered and looked upon so many books I really didn't want to make my mind up on what 2 books I could borrow. Like so many post-war children I became addicted to the very popular author Edith Blyton and her ‘Just William' stories.
Wherever my wife and I have settled there has always been a library able to provide me with personal choice reading and additional study material. The Adelaide University Library, unlike the Athens library of 330BC, offered me as a student at the Institute of Technology, access to study books which could be borrowed (if one was quick off the mark), and reference material which was not loaned out. A library or libraries seem to suggest a town or a city has reached a point in its growth in much the same way, as a large tree adds buttresses to strengthen and stabilise this plant which grows wood.
During the many years in which my wife and I have received monthly visits from the Burnside Library Home Delivery Service, seem to me to act in a similar way to the travelling fibres of a tree root. They often reach out over extensive distances to locate water, sugars, and exchangeable minerals. They play a vital role in maintaining a healthy tree. And I believe our monthly visits by Amanda help maintain a robust library system.
Thank you ALL for your continuing respected efforts in trying to satisfy the reading needs of people of any age. Keep putting down strengthening roots. Keep well and safe.
Ian & Dorothy, Kensington Park
