The Librarian’s silver curls framed her face and the shine of her glasses illuminated the room. She called the small Library here in the city home. The mornings that went by here were spent smiling because she knew it as a fountain of nectar for the head. In the city, where the roads are rivers of steel, people don’t really have the time to appreciate small beauties like libraries and the magical people who operate them without anyone noticing. But still, no matter how many thankless days are still to come, the shrine to our history as thinking beings will always need tending by her gentle hands.

Unfortunately, The Library has been opening its doors to a brave new world where virtually all recorded information can be easily found in people’s phones. But what a glowing phone lacks is a sense of atmosphere. As a testament to both mind and soul the library always radiates a stoic straightforwardness. A humble bowl of candy is the only noticeable splash of colors in otherwise virgin beige. But that’s how it should be; an American library is a place of genuine tears and reflection. Unfortunately, it’s hard to put your phone down and actually reflect on something; reflection means you’ll have to look at yourself and that can be very scary for a lot of people.

Since the act of learning has been effectively diminished to frivolous Google searches, people live their lives believing that they know everything. The technology we’ve applied to our society solves certain problems but creates new ones; it gives and it takes away. While we strive for vast amounts of information to be readily available at our fingertips we tend to forget all the things we risk in the process, such as our sense of curiosity, our optimism, or the library. With its volumes of ink and pages still remaining in its vanilla walls, the library reaches out to a people who made it obsolete long, long ago. Sadly, by making the library obsolete we made ourselves a tiny bit more ignorant.

The Library is always there for us when we want to shut things out, and I think that the Librarian there, the one that heals all the spines and pages of forgotten books, understands that. She fills a sacred position in an unsacred time, though she still continues on with her work and her Mother-Theresa-smile, wading up to her ankles in the tears of dead authors.