For some it is the smell of library books, musky and warm. For others it is the sweet "hello" from the friendly librarian welcoming them in. For Kevin Hildreth, Branch Manager at Branciforte library, it was love at first sight. It was the books, the book covers, and all the inner-workings of checking out a library book! Read Kevin's story to learn how this love turned into a career.
"This story involves my first encounter with a library. One day, a few weeks after I started Kindergarten, my mom told me my dad was going to a place called “the library” that night, before it closed, so he could obtain a card. She asked me what type of book I wanted. I had just seen a “Flintstones” cartoon involving a volcano and, naturally, I wanted to know more about this odd and dangerous thing. About a half-hour after going to bed, I was woken up by my dad who gave me a book bearing a schematic drawing of a volcano. It had a thin transparent film over the cover, somewhat like saran wrap, but not sticky. He described it as a book jacket. The strangeness of this “jacket” fascinated me along with the odd green colored card in a pocket on its first page. Even more weird were the illustrations and photographs inside. Over the next several days, both my parents read to me and I learned not only how volcanos formed, but also about another phenomenon described by the title of the book, “Earthquakes and Volcanos.”
My mom told me that earthquakes could be just as damaging as volcanos. She read how they were formed by movement of rocks under the earth (this was 1965, before the general acceptance of plate tectonics). She also showed me photos detailing the damage caused by tremors, including several of San Francisco after the 1906 disaster. As we were living in Connecticut at that time, I asked if earthquakes ever occur where we lived. She said emphatically, if not entirely correctly, no. I told her that, when I grew up, I would travel to a place like Hawaii to see an actual eruption or to San Francisco where I could experience a real earthquake. Though she said Hawaii would be okay, so long as I kept my distance, she advised me not to spend too much time in California.
A little less than two weeks later, I got to visit the actual building where the book was found. There, I was amazed by the shear number of books I saw. After choosing a new one to take home, I was guided by my parents to what they said was a check-out desk. Holding me up, they let me see the clerk at the counter take a white card out of the pocket of the book and put it in a wooden box with other cards. She then placed a green card into a strange device that made an odd ‘kerchunk’ sound before slipping it into the same pocket. The mysterious mechanics of the process fascinated me as much as the new book itself. Thus, my lifelong love for libraries began.
I don’t know if my mom imagined then that I would make a career of this love. Of course, twenty-four years later, during a phone call she made from Florida late one certain October day in 1989, she reminded me, again, of her opinion about my choice of a “long-term” stay in California. "
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