Libraries and authors have a symbiotic relationship. Some of our local authors sent us their thoughts about the Library to help us celebrate 100 years. The excerpts here give a sense of the different ways that the Westport Library and our local authors appreciate each other.
*A library is a building with books in it, and in most cases that's good enough. But for a writer, the Westport Public Library is something else, something more, enough in the way of resources and assistance to make up virtually the whole "acknowledgements" page of the writer's book. Which is to say, if there is a source that the staff cannot find, it cannot be found or does not exist. Eric Burns
*The Westport Public Library has been a vital source to me in researching my last book on former heavweight champion Gene Tunney and my current book on the New York Giants football team of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In addition to using books from the library as sources, I've also spent countless hours going through microfilm of long-ago newspapers obtained for me by the Library’s Inter-library loan service, as well as difficult-to-find and even out-of-print books from around the country that have also contributed to my work as a writer of non-fiction. Jack Cavanaugh
*The people who work at the Westport Library are lovely. I always have the feeling that library folk are immediately fond of you just because you’re using their library, so they actually want to help you. I never feel like I’m an imposition here. Frank Deford
*Every published book of mine--some 260 over the past 54 years--whether only illustrated or written and illustrated by me, has had a foundation of library exploration and research--all sorts of libraries: public, private, school, college, university, special, corporate, and government.
Leonard Everett Fisher
*The Westport Library is not a storage of information. Rather, through its librarians, holdings, and extended facilities it is an extension of the minds and lives of its patrons.
Since I moved to this delightful town thirty-five years ago, the Library has served me remarkably in the writing of my books and professional papers. J.T. Fraser
*I discovered the Westport library as my home-away-from-home, quite by chance. On our way down from Mother Goose my son and I stopped at the reference library and passed a little room filled with computers. A light switched on. I could write my books here, could let a little structure into my day, could have some peace and quiet until I have to return home with my ‘Mommy’ hat on. That was seven years ago. I have written my last six books at the Westport library. The small room filled with computers gave way to the large table upstairs by the window, which in turn gave way to a quiet reading room downstairs. Jane Green
*I wrote the overwhelming majority of my book at the library. There is no more inspirational site in Westport, from the ducks swimming on the river outside the windows, to the Staples students studying and flirting - not necessarily in that order - among the stacks, to the hushed voices of parents guiding their little ones upstairs to the children's area, where my own children used to play.
Whenever the blank page threatened to overwhelm my senses, I could always recharge with a walk by the water, or a cup of tea from the snack bar, or a few minutes of absolute quiet, which aren't always easy to find. These days every place needs to be about something - about eating or drinking or shopping or working out. The library is about thinking. There is no better place to write.
Mike Greenberg
*It has been said that a town’s library is a measure of a townspeople’s thirst for knowledge. That being the case, Westporters are, by and large, a most knowledgeable group of residents.
Woody Klein
*There’s a phrase for a set-up like that, it’s “The Best of Both Worlds,” a phrase often associated with the Westport Library. It’s a world-class, cosmopolitan institution that feels Americana and quaint. The people who hang there are big-city smart, and small-town friendly. Robert Leleux
*So, Westport Library, thanks for the solace, the knowledge, your state of the art technology, and your old-fashioned, personalized commitment to the community. Mary-Lou Weisman
*With the high quality of books, reference materials and on-going community involvement comes another very important factor that makes this library so special: the wonderful people that work at the library. Hans Wilhelm
*The other thing that struck me was the variety of the people around me. There were high-school students immersed in research papers. There were middle-aged folk laboring over their tax returns. And there were a few people who seemed to have no other place to go, but were drawing on the Library’s resources—newspapers, magazines, cross-word puzzles—with no less claim on the space than the fledgling scholars and tax analysts. Carter Wiseman
*I spent much of that summer reading microfilm, too. I am less mechanically adept than Elmer Fudd, necessitating trip after trip to the research librarians' desk. Yet each time, without fail, they accompanied me back to my machine, where they smiled helpfully, solved my problem, then went back to serve someone with an actual research question. Dan Woog
Surrounded By Words (the complete comments)
