Our splendiferous Longmont Public Library has a number of books in its collection which are about libraries. The following very different examples just go to show you.

The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World is not a book to be taken lightly. It is so big and well-endowed, you may want to read it in a cozy corner of the library, rather than wrangle it home in your little red wagon. The color photographs of sumptuous rooms in opulent, historic libraries display sculptures, murals, carvings, gilt, acres of dark wood, marble, and shelves holding ranks of brown books that would surely disintegrate if touched. Not a James Patterson or Danielle Steel among them. Except, of course, in the United States also beautiful Library of Congress, which attempts to stock copies of every US copyrighted book — more than 17 million an counting — plus maps, photographs, drawings, films, audio media, and on and on.

Down Cut Shin Creek is the opposite of the above book. It’s a plain and skinny nonfiction book about the Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky. The picture are black and white, which is fitting since the setting is the hollows of the Cumberland Mountains during the Great Depression. In the 30s, President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration sent librarians on horseback into the back country to bring books to adults and children. Also fittingly, you can find copies of this little book in both the adult and children’s sections of the library.

If you enjoy cozy novels, you may already know about the Library Lovers Mystery series by Jenn McKinlay. Titles listed in the Longmont Library catalog include Due or Die and A Likely Story. Others are stocked by the Boulder Public Library, and all you have to do is let the Longmont Library know that you want them. Isn’t modern technology wonderful when it works? Anyway, as you no doubt guessed, Ms. McKinlay draws on her own experiences as a librarian to give authenticity to her characters and settings. (It’s hoped that her experiences did not include murders.)

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” Bertrand Russell