Recently, my sister and I were reminiscing about the library where, as children, we were regular users. Current and former Kansas City area locals will likely share many similar and fond memories of the children's room at the Plaza Library. For my sister and me, those memories included choosing the books we would check out for the week (often our same favorites over and over again), seeing if the display in the glass counter on the way downstairs had changed since our last visit, filling our summer reading club card with stamps, and yes - feeling a little grown up when we ventured upstairs and started exploring the books on the main floor of the library.
My kids now enjoy my same Plaza Library. Well, not exactly the same. It was renovated a couple of years ago. I miss the things I enjoyed that they will not experience, but I'm sure their time there will hold memories just as special. I hope one day when they are grown they will also call each other and remember how fun it was snuggling in the globe chair with a good book, exploring the surrounding landscape through the telescopes at the windows, and creating masterpieces in the activity room.
And while I do make the effort to share the Plaza Library with my kids, we take advantage of our county library more often. I, in particular, am a power user of my county library system. I reserve a wide variety of books, dvds, cds, and now - Wii games!!! - using my online account. When I have time, I just walk through the stacks and collect a pile of whatever catches my attention.When I don't have time, I pick up my reserved items, use the self-serve check out and can be out of there in minutes. My library system's website also offers Mango foreign language learning services - for free. If I continue making my way through the online tutorials, my conversational Spanish might grow beyond "donde esta el bano?" thanks to this freebie. And, I can request books that are not part of their collection. So far, they have purchased every book I've submitted, and I'm first in line to check them out.
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