Libraries are wonderful places. They have changed so much over the years, but somehow they’ve stayed very much the same.

Shhhhh …!

When was the last time you were in a library?

Ambling the aisles in the special, hushed ambience of a library, arms burgeoning with selections. It’s such a pleasurable activity. You slip into a ruminative trance. A book cover catches your eye. It’s a tale about the role elephants played in Burma during the Second World War. Who knew?! You add it to your pile. There’s a teach-yourself-to-knit book. It gets added to the stack. A book on the history of cartography. Why not?

Libraries are wonderful places. They have changed so much over the years, but somehow they’ve stayed very much the same. Whereas, as a child, you could count on being shushed, today’s librarian seems less austere.

I usually start by looking at the Staff Picks selection. There is always something you would never have considered were it not for the recommendation. Had it not been for a staff pick at my local library, I’d probably never have discovered Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer-prize winning American author. I’m now a Strout devotee and, when I finish her prize-winning novel, Olive Kitteridge, I’ll have read everything she’s written. This isn’t a happy accomplishment as it leaves me with nothing to look forward to.

When I was a kid, we went to the library once a week. My mom would vanish into the adult section, often coming home with TimeLife “cuisine of the world” cookbooks or history books.

We kids would prowl the basement part of the library. Our quarry was Pierre Berton’s kids books, anything by Enid Blyton and, of course, anything from those serial adventurers Nancy Drew, or the Hardy Boys. When my kids were little, the rule on our weekly trips to the library was that they were allowed to bring home as many books as they could carry. At the cabin, this excursion was bi-weekly, so the book titles were wildly random. Lives of the great composers, lives of hockey stars, the nine lives of the celebrated felines of literature. …

Andrew Carnegie liked libraries. The Scottish-American magnate and philanthropist put so much stock in the benefits of public libraries that he built and donated more than half all the libraries in the U.S. He didn’t let the racial segregation laws of the era curtail his massive project, constructing libraries specifically for communities where black Americans wouldn’t have had library access. He couldn’t change the laws of the day, but he found away to sidestep them. Carnegie didn’t just confine his largesse to the U.S., building libraries all over the world, including Canada. Years ago, I visited the Carnegie Library in Vancouver, located at the corner of Hastings and Main Street. He didn’t scrimp on these edifices, and they boast fine masonry and finishes.

I used to visit a picturesque library in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was a storybook structure with a cupola and a working fireplace. While I lived in the U.S., I worked for Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, and because of that, had access to the private libraries of Manhattan. These assignments were pure cinema. A specialist librarian would meet me at a heavy oak door and usher me into a solemn, high-ceilinged room with massive tables. Oftentimes, there would be jade-green library lamps glowing over these mammoth tables. I’d describe my task to a nodding librarian who would vanish into an even more private area and wheel out trolleys of material for my inspection. This always involved white cotton gloves which the library would supply. The material was amazing — maps, documents, birth and death registries, the works. I always felt like a Rhodes Scholar on these information-gathering expeditions.

There is a sign at the Dunbar Public Library branch, which reads: “A good library has something to offend everyone.” And that is as it should be. It goes without saying that it will also have something to delight everyone.

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane’s up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com

Question: Do you use the library?

Send your answers by email text, not an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We will print some next week in this space.

Question: What are your tales from ‘lost and found’?

• All my life I have been very lucky in finding things, and I mean hundreds of items. Four weeks ago, in our townhouse complex, I came across a rechargeable Ryobi variable drill and left a note at the spot I found it. No one claimed it, so it is now in my toolbox. About four years ago, I came across a discarded box of 12 books, so I took them to put in our local community library box. I fanned out the pages in case there was money in the pages, and when I got to the eighth book I found seven $100 bills.

Rick Fearman

• When Mike and I walked the Camino de Santiago, he wore his beloved (and absurdly expensive) Borsalino hat. One day, it vanished. We had a pact never to retrace our steps, so we just kept going, joking that the hat would find us if it really wanted to. For several days, word spread that a group of “Frenchies” were searching for “the Canadian man with the white backpack.” They had the hat. We kept walking. The reunion in a Foncebadón mountain hostel a week later felt like something out of a pilgrimage rom‑com. After finishing the 800 km walk, we went to London for 10 days. There, in a thrift shop, Mike found a vintage Borsalino for a bargain‑basement price. So in the end, we left with one hat, lost one hat, and somehow returned home with two.

Debra Dolan

• My lady friend had presented me with a St. Christopher medallion to keep me safe on a seven-month backpacking tour of Europe in 1975. After my safe return, I was cycling and didn’t notice it fall off, but later I found it caught on the chain guard. On another occasion, I was diving from the high board. The force ripped off the chain and it sank to the bottom. The next day, I asked at the lost and found and, miraculously, the filter had captured it. I still have the medallion to this day.

Gerry van der Wolf

• While I was away on a trip, I kept checking my bags for a pair of earrings I thought I had packed. Nope, not in my belongings. I must have left them at home, but kept fretting about them, checking the place where we stayed. Upon my return, I checked the places I usually keep them, but they were nowhere to be found. After more searching and praying to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, I went into my room and there they were laying on my comforter at the end of my bed. You figure that one out.

Trudy Halliday

• I visit an older friend once a year, and one time while knocking on his front door, I noticed a pair of those sunglasses that clip onto your regular glasses sitting on an adjacent bannister. When he answered the door, I asked him why he had left them there. His face lit up and he happily proclaimed “Oh my goodness, I’ve been looking for those things for three days.”

David Lindsay

• My father insisted all his lost things had been stolen. When he found them, he’d announce, “Well, they brought it back.” Our sanity-saver came from an elderly Hungarian lady: “Whatever the house takes, the house gives back … just not when you want it.” She’s right. Keys resurface in an old coat, glasses in the garden, the remote in a drawer. Once, a passport turned up on top of the hot water tank at a holiday rental, discovered too late to catch our flight home. Never anywhere sensible, never found during the search. Now I just wait. The thieves and the house work in shifts

Lyn ter Borg

• Several years ago, my brother had a nice collection of glass blenders. He noticed one day that there were only the bases on the shelf. Even asking other members of the family brought no answers — where had the glass disappeared to? So after searching in vain for some time, he did as you often do and threw out the bases. Some weeks later, he opened a cupboard to find a whole row of shiny, clean glass. His girlfriend had cleaned them, but didn’t put them back together or tell anyone. Does this tell us to be more patient in our searches?

Claire Robertson

• I’m betting the “thief” was a crow, which somehow scooped the small item and later dropped it on your car when it discovered the item wasn’t edible … or useful.

Larry Jordan

• We recently went to Newfoundland and I used my cane to manoeuvre the airports. We arrived in St. John’s and went to a couple of shops to get supplies for our Vrbo. When we got back to the car, I realized I didn’t have my cane. We retraced our steps with no luck, but at the final shop, the cashier advised that while no canes had been turned in, she might have a solution. She went into the storeroom and brought out a cane that she said had been in the “lost and found” for over a year. Why don’t you take it? It demonstrated the kindness of Newfoundlanders, and the cane will always remind me of “The Rock”.

Kent Barbour