Every Stage of My Life

By Laura M. 

Public libraries have played an important role in every stage of my life and some of my happiest memories. No matter where I live, the library is part of my life. I’m sure I’d be a different person without school and public libraries. And now with the digital reference/databases researching is a breeze.

The local library was also a place to recharge my batteries when I was the caregiver for my mother-in-law. Even now some of the things on my bucket list are there because I read about them as a child, teen, or adult at a library. Some of them I’ve been lucky enough to cross of the list. It was thrilling to visit places I read about at the library. Like the Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park. Or the La Brea Tar Pit.

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“Library” is Love

By Tegan M.  Some of my very first memories involve the library. I grew up in a rural town on a small farm. My mother was/is an avid reader and we visited the library nearly once a week. There were small carved figurines, statues, paintings and so many books my little brain couldn’t comprehend where … Read more

Rich Genealogy History in Carolina Origins

By Joe Garonzik

In 1663, England’s King Charles II ceded the Carolinas to Anthony Ashley Cooper and seven other proprietors who had supported the Stuarts in ending the Cromwellian Revolution and returning Charles II to the throne. Notwithstanding the 16th-century exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh and legendary Virginia Dare, it was a group of Virginians who established North Carolina’s oldest settlement along the Albemarle Sound in 1653–a full decade before the installation of the Lord Proprietors.

The Crown divided the Carolinas in 1691, although North Carolina would not receive its own governor for another 20 years. British, Huguenot, German and Swiss populated the North Carolina tidewater during the first half of the 18th-century. New Bern, established primarily by Germanic immigrants under the impetus of Christopher de Graffenried, would become the largest city in the colony. Large numbers of Scots Highlanders and Scots-Irish, many by way of the Great Wagon Road through Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley, populated the western part of the colony. Eighteenth-century North Carolina was also noteworthy for its large Quaker population and for Wachovia, a Moravian settlement in Forsyth County.

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Libraries Are Such Peaceful Places

As a reader and author, libraries are both a treasure trove and a retreat for me. Their peace and quiet are calming and the endless shelves of books are wonderful to see – let alone read! Librarians are helpful and knowledgeable, and they’re usually great characters.

I love bookstores, but libraries have something so intriguing about them. While the internet provides an instant, practical research tool, sometimes doing a little digging through real pages informs research for a book in a new way.

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Libraries Forever!

By Kathleen K.  My favorite trip as a young child was going to the library. There were always new books to look at, read and discuss. In every community I have ever lived in – and there have been quite a few – I have ALWAYS gone to the local library to get a library … Read more

My Mom Made Me Do it

By Debra M.  I fell in love with reading and books early on, and really became a voracious reader in third grade. We didn’t have much of a school library, so I used our public library in Jackson, MS as own personal bookstore. In college I was majoring in education, and while home for summer … Read more

For the Love of Books

By Sara T.

I was five when I got my first library card. It was green and beige and I got to “sign” the back – clear evidence of my terrible kindergarten handwriting. My mom and I would take weekly trips there, a bag load of books hanging from her shoulder and an eager kid with a gap-toothed smile pulling on her arm to get inside.

I grew up in the pages of “Corduroy” and “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Junie B. Jones” and “Little Critter.” And when I got tired of imagined classrooms and lost buttons, I found “Harry Potter,” “Nancy Drew” and “Charlie Bone.” Books were the one thing my mom would always splurge on when I was young. Who needed more clothes or toys when you could have books – a quasi-toy that I would play with for much longer than my Barbies.

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Did You Know: Rock and Roll, it’s here to stay!

Did you know?

Did you know…that when it comes to music, Rock is such a broad category people organize the definition around a genre? Examples include Elvis Presley was Rockabilly, Bob Dylan as folk, Public Enemy as rappers and even Madonna who was considered a disco diva. Read all about it in GVRL’s What is Rock? The Birth of Rock & Roll: Music in the 1950s Through the 1960s. Check it out or call your rep for more information.

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19th Century Nitty-Gritty: “Rock” and Roll

By Bethany Dotson

My name is Bethany Dotson, and I’m a market development manager here at Gale – and, for today, your featured guest blogger on Nineteenth-Century Nitty Gritty. My background is in English and Spanish literature, and I love all things Victorian.

I have recently discovered the joys of audiobooks on my commute—with the complication that the four miles I drive to work lends itself to only a few pages at a time. For the last few weeks, then, I have been enjoying (I can’t say devouring at this pace) Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, about—well, about the birth of modern geology.

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