Rogers Free Library Groundbreaking: Remarks by the Chief Library Officer

Good morning. I bring greetings from the governor and the State of Rhode Island and its Office of Library and Information Services. We are proud to be part of this very important construction project. This event is also of particular importance to me.

I first saw Bristol in 1979, newly minted coordinator of the Island Interrelated Library System come to see what one of my member libraries was all about. I met Ned Comstock and spent some time with Mrs. Fales and discovered a library bursting with people and with a unique collection of books and periodicals.

Rogers Free Library is still the only library in these parts where you can come to peruse Hemming’s Motor News.

I learned that the library had been a gift to the Town of Bristol more than a century ago (now 130 years ago) from Maria DeWolf Rogers in honor of her husband. It had originally been the second floor, upstairs over a bank, and that a fire two decades previous had led to rebuilding and the library’s current configuration, which is still the library’s current configuration!

Among my first impressions was that this was a library that needed more room; a library that had the love and respect of its community and needed to be able to respond to that love and respect by growing in it. That is what we are celebrating today. From more than a decade and-a-half of hard work and stamina on the part of Joan Prescott and her staff, the Library Board, Building Committee, Town Administration and innumerable citizens of Bristol as well as state and local government agencies has come this growth, this beginning.

I do still get asked why we still need libraries when you can google whatever you want over the Internet. Chicago’s Mayor, Richard Daly (having spent some of the 1960s in the Midwest, I never thought I’d be quoting a mayor of that name) answered as well as I could, he said “I think you have to understand what a library does. It’s more than the Internet, more than a bookstore. It’s part of the community, an educational place for all ages to go to. . .in a knowledge-based society and economy, we’d better be promoting more and more libraries.” I really didn’t have to say that in Bristol RI, did I? This morning’s activities are evidence that it is already well known.

It is also well known at the State Office of Library and Information Services. We break ground this morning on the 90th project of the State Public Library Construction Reimbursement Program, and the fifth in the East Bay. It will increase the library’s space more community empowerment in our knowledge-based society and economy. Mayor Daly and Maria DeWolf Rogers would be pleased.

At the State Government we are proud and happy to be part of this effort. I want to convey our thanks to those who have made it possible and also express our wishes that all will go smoothly so that by the end of 2008 the people of Bristol will be enjoying this magnificent expression of your commitment to education and culture and the people of Rhode Island will be welcoming this magnificent new sibling into our family of libraries