A Student's View
Chamber of Commerce Student Essays

Phillipsburg City Library
by Susan Streit

The buzz of a modem sounds in the background. The spontaneous whir of the copy machine tells of numerous copies spitting out. Computer printers hum synchronized songs, printing reams of information. Telephones jingle every few minutes. Is this the sound of a busy, hustle and bustle corporate office? No, it's the busy, activity-filled city library. Our library promotes and provides for our common need, reading. The city library makes Phillipsburg the place with the right stuff.

As a young child, the library represented a haven to me. Excitedly going to bed every night, I would lie in bed and think about what I would do in the library the next day. They had so many exciting things to do there. They had books with audio tapes that I would listen to while I read the books, along with joke books and silly mysteries. I loved the bright-colored displays of books, pictures, stuffed animals and puzzles and the entire environment that the staff set up to entice kids to read. An antique claw-based bath tub remained my favorite part about the library. After meticulously choosing 2 or 3 books, I sat in the blue-painted, pillow-filled bathtub for hours and hours.

Our library in Phillipsburg is benevolent because it offers so many things for different types of people. For young children, they have a toybrary filled with games available to youngsters that promote creativity and memory usage. They also provide story time and Summer Reading, two of my favorite things. At story time, children huddle around an adult, who reads them a story or two. Sometimes children create little works of art out of clay or paper that resemble scenes or a character from the stories that they hear. During the Summer Reading program, a week's activities interrelate. Children play games, fashion arts and crafts, and, of course, read stories and listen to stories. One summer featured a theme of "The Wizard of Oz." The other children and I participated in different activities that week, still one activity stood out in my mind. Choosing a few books every day, the other children and I took them home to read in the evening. The next day we would take a slip of paper that would say how many books we had read the previous night, and for every book we read, we painted one yellow brick outside the library and scribbled our name on it. Eventually, when the week was up and everyone had made their bricks, the bright yellow rectangles formed a yellow brick path, similar to the road Dorothy strolled along in the movie. The activity was fun, but it also made the other children and I proud of our accomplishments. When I walk up the cold cement to the front entrance of the library and look down at the random specks of faded yellow, I reminisce about the fun times that I experienced at Summer Reading.

The library has a lot to offer for other age groups, also. It contains art exhibits and art prints for check-out. At the brown-bag film series, lunch time movies spark the interest for adults to want to read books to find out more about the movie they watched. A copy machine and fax remain available for public use. The overhead projector, a slide projector, and an instant camera stay obtainable, also. The library is wired for Internet access for the public, and adults can sign for their young children to use, also. Kansas One Stop provides an on-line database for employment at the library. They are a Kansas Library Card participant. Meeting rooms for conferences are available. Microfilms of county newspapers and a microfilm reader-printer are there for people to might like to look at older newspapers and learn of history in our town. Tax forms are available, also. For the people with different interests, our library has collections of special interest containing westerns, science fiction, romance and mystery. For the elderly in the community, they offer large-print books, and they have collections at the Phillips County Retirement Center, Westview Homes and Long Term Care. This is where a library worker collects books from the library and takes them out to LTC, and leaves them there so that they're available for the residents to read. A worker exchanges the books every six to eight weeks. Tables and plush chairs randomly placed around the library provide places to relax while reading or writing. A kind and smiling staff remains the best part about the library, because they will go to any measure to get needed information whether it means searching through ubiquitous shelves of books, or calling neighboring libraries and faxing information for someone.

Our city library is outstanding because there is something in the library for everyone, no matter what age and interests the people have. They create a welcoming, comfortable environment to encourage reading for all ages. Because of the library, Phillipsburg has the right stuff.