Note From Nancy
Recently, I had the privilege of attending the American Library Association’s annual conference. It was like being a kid in a candy store! There were free books, authors, illustrators, and publishers galore. I brought back over 100 books, many of which will be published later this year. I had the chance to hear award-winning authors talk about their writing process and their upcoming books. I met other librarians from across the United States. I learned how they were serving their patrons and I picked their minds for ideas. It was an invigorating few days.
I love the fact that libraries are a place where everyone can come to read, learn, and grow. I am inspired by how many of you come to enjoy and discover all the good reads and programs that The Andover Public Library has to offer. This year we had a great turnout for our Summer Reading Program. One hundred six (106) reading logs were turned in indicating over fifteen hundred (1,500) hours of reading during the 6 weeks of the program.
In her acknowledgments in her best-selling book Women Who Run With The Wolves, author Clarissa Pinkola Estes, gives her “profound gratitude” to her “most essential teachers: All librarians, the keepers of the treasure rooms filled with all of humanity’s sighs, sorrows, hopes and happinesses …”
Best-selling author Mary Pipher in her newest book A Life In Light: Meditations on Impermanence, recounts her love for her local library while she was a girl and how “reading lit a path into my future.” She recalls her Aunt Margaret telling her, “…that many people only 
know their friends and neighbors, but that readers are able to experience the lives of thousands of people from all times and places.”
She also writes that “…reading became my way of understanding the world…offered me hope, soothed me in difficult moments, and gave me a sense of the immense complexity of the human spirit.”
So, here’s to the gift of reading and all the libraries which hold so many treasures. Make it a great rest of the summer. Please join us for our annual Friends of the Library book sale on August 27th and pick up a few “treasures” that might help you understand the world a little better. And thanks again for the many ways you support the Andover Public Library.
Sincerely,
Nancy Logan, Director