Hi! I’m Beth Anderson, current President of the Whitefield Public Library Board of Trustees.

Upon moving to Whitefield twenty-five years ago, my first to-do was to register my third grader and my first grader at the Whitefield School. The second was to go to the library and get a card, and see if there was a story time that I could attend with my preschooler. Going to the library is a wonderful way to become a part of the community! Library staff members enjoy helping people. Whether helping to find a perfect book for a preschooler obsessed with trucks, or to explain to a newbie how town meeting works, or suggesting that attending the band concerts on the common is a great way to meet other families, librarians know how to find answers to all sorts of questions. And they won't charge you a cent, even if you fill a bag with books to take home and enjoy until your next visit.

Libraries have always been the home for life long learners. Each book can teach something new or provide a different way of thinking about an old idea. Multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett says “Read every day. That’s how knowledge works, it builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it.” Every book I have ever read (and there are thousands) belongs to me now. It is part of my thinking process and my feeling process. I didn’t have to take out a student loan or run up a credit card bill in order to own it. All I needed was a library card. And that was free.
 

In a world where we spend a lot of our time online rather than in the actual company of other people, the library is a place where we can become a part of a community. Where little children and their caretakers can come to story time, where children can hear wonderful stories, and look for small details in wonderful illustrations, while their caretakers can talk to other adults who also spend their days with children, where both children and adults can make friends, where an adult can find the latest New York Times bestseller, or a book on gardening or yoga, where there are all sorts of DVD’s to borrow for rainy afternoons, where you can join a book club, or find an opportunity to volunteer, where tourists or new residents can find out about Whitefield and what it has to offer, where a jobseeker can use a computer to search and apply for jobs, or check out a book to brush up on their knowledge of Quickbooks, where a non-tech person can get help learning to email, where anything and everything is possible, where you can see the beating heart of a community. The Whitefield Public Library is the heart of our community. I plan to use my term on the Board of Trustees to make sure that Whitefield residents both new and old know that a wealth of information and a warm community are waiting for them at our beautiful Carnegie built library. And to encourage them to get a library card and use it. Knowledge compounded daily.