I'm making my usual rounds in the library when I notice a door I've never before walked through and suddenly I want to see what's on the other side.I've always wanted to live in a library and for the past two years I have, more or less. My office and classroom and work area are in the library; I teach and write and research and lead workshops here, and I have taken students to Special Collections and read ghost stories to listeners in the stacks (read it here). But as much as I know and love my library, it still offers occasional surprises.
I walk through that unfamiliar door, and if this were a thriller I would find something shocking on the other side--a blood-drenched corpse, a Cheshire cat, a chance for romance or heroic action. But instead I find a stairwell. I've never used that stairwell before, but it's good to know it's there if I ever need it.
I look around some more and find corners I've never explored, cabinets full of microfilm I've never read, periodicals bound in marbled covers I've never cracked. On the top floor I find a new hero: Bernice Eddy Wooley, class of 1924, whose work contributed to the development of the polio vaccine and "provided a major impetus for further research on cancer viruses." Three cheers for Bernice! She's been hanging on the wall up there all this time
and I never bothered to know her.How many other heroes are hiding in my library? The only way to find out is to keep opening doors to see what's on the other side.
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