You might be wondering if librarians miss the library when they are home. Who wouldn’t want to spend all their time surrounded by books? While I love going to Marilyn Praisner Library every day, the truth is that librarians are never far from a library because we have our own at home! Today we’re looking at what makes up my home library.
My home library consists of one bookcase. Seem small? It is. My house is 100 years old this year and was originally built for a family of farm workers and housed 8 people(!). My little family fits comfortably in our house, but I’ve had to sacrifice some books to make it that way.
My library mostly consists of second hand books. Many of them purchased from Friends of the Library book sales. All those nice looking Harry Potters? Thanks Friends of the Library, Rockville Memorial Chapter! It’s an eclectic mix of books from my childhood, gifts, college books, and must haves.
Starting at the top I have half of the Anne of Green Gables collection and beautiful copies of Little Women and A Little Princess. There’s also a stack of craft books and kayaking and camping books.
The next shelf down is my all things England shelf: Jane Austen, Harry Potter, and Sherlock Holmes. There’s some early American history there as well, but the pilgrims came from England so it works, right? My golden snitch sits proudly in front of them all.
Most of the books on the next shelf down are there because they happened to fit there. There isn’t any uniting force behind them. This is the shelf where my library books go. That way I always know where they are and I don’t have to search through the house for them. You’ll notice a small stack of board books, too. Most of the children’s books are in an annex collection (more on that later), but these stay downstairs at the ready for an impromptu reading.
An elephant and camel adorn the next shelf. These were gifts from family travels. Laurie R. King, a favorite author, has about half the shelf dedicated to her. These were another FOL book sale find. Another favorite author, James Herriot, sits on the far right side. His All Creatures Great and Small collection is one of those books you can read over and over again.
You’ll notice the 5th shelf down is packed. This is because I was running out of room and so it is doubled up. I gifted my husband all the Terry Pratchett Discworld books for Christmas. There are a lot of them. Behind them sits a collection of mostly leftover books from college.
On the bottom shelf sit tall books, cookbooks (the ones that don’t fit in the actual cookbook shelf), more craft books, coloring books, graphic novels, and a basket with coasters and a handheld microscope.
But libraries have more than books, you say? You are right! I have a small vinyl record collection and a dozen or so DVDs. Mostly I borrow movies from the library.
Now onto the Annex Collections! There is a shelf and a half of cookbooks in the kitchen (where else would I keep them?) and all the children’s books are upstairs in my son’s room. BTW, since MCPL’s print children’s books are currently not available, check out the children’s books accessible through our online collections, including Overdrive, TumbleBooks, and Bookflix.
The wonderful thing about not having a large space for a home library is that I don’t have to move that many books. You might think it’s nice to have a larger library, but guess what…I do have one! I go to it every day and even visit online when I’m not there.
Thank you for visiting my (home) library!