|
As part of our 125th Anniversary, we invite you, our library users
and supporters, to share your thoughts about the Library and what it means to you.
Your memories, stories, poems, photos and drawings are all welcome, and may be published
on our Web site, in an anniversary book or display or used for publicity purposes.
Statement by Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian Emeritus of California, in honor of San Francisco Public Library’s 125th Anniversary:
The San Francisco Public Library resembles the city it serves. This is to say:
the San Francisco Public Library is venerable, inclusive, elegant, intermittently
formal and informal, free spirited, and sometimes zany! For 125 years, the San
Francisco public library has been one of the primary ways that San Francisco has
thought about itself. Cities, you see, are libraries of human activity. A city
is a collection of people, together with the agencies, institutions, and public
services that support human life. Cities are works of art: grand arrangements
of architecture, roadways, and open space. Above all else, cities are agencies of
memory. They provide a means for human beings to store and arrange memory across
time.
All these things and more are also what libraries are about. Like cities, libraries
are inventories of human achievement, systematized and rendered recoverable. It
can be argued, in fact, that the city and the library as institutions have run
together in tandem for more than 5,000 years. If you ask yourself, “Where can I find
San Francisco?” you will have many answers; for San Francisco is a beautifully situated
city, with many distinguished examples of architecture and engineering. High on your
list, however, will be the San Francisco Public Library. In its Main Library and its
branches, the San Francisco Public Library not only serves the reading and information
needs of the citizens of San Francisco, it also represents their best hopes for
themselves and their community. The peoples of the world have come to San Francisco.
The wisdom of the world—and its most up-to-date information! —have come to the San
Francisco Public Library for the instruction, delight, and usefulness of its citizens.
---Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian Emeritus of California
|
