This won’t surprise you, but we’re big into storytelling at the library. I presume that, by now, you’ve noticed the books, but we also share stories through our film and cultural festivals, oral history programs, music and the arts, food, and sometimes through objects.
I’ve long been a collector of small objects: coins, sea glass, a strange, tiny charm of Queen Elizabeth II. Each piece is meaningful and takes me back to a time, event, and place in my life. If you’re one of the many people who spent the winter applying the KonMari Method to your home, you’ve recently considered what things you want to keep, curating your personal collection of objects and small tokens that connect you to people and places you want to remember.
Along the outside wall of our first-floor Community Room is the Happy World mural, a collaboration between artist Ik-Joong Kang and the Princeton community, created in 2004 for the new library building. Do you stop to examine it, or has it become part of the background? When I look at the wall, I’m always drawn to tiles that have an item attached – metal figures, buttons, jewelry, this bird charm, parts of science experiments, or stamps. These pieces paint a picture of families and individuals in Princeton, and, together, the wall helps us tell an even larger story.
Although the library continues to grow and change, it is still the place where we can all share parts of ourselves. We rely on you to help us fill our pages, creating chapters of this community’s story by bringing your creativity and curiosity to our programs and collections, getting inspired by our book lists, or joining our book groups, our Tuesday night writing groups, or the Princeton Sketchers.
In the coming months we’ll be celebrating a “Universe of Stories,” looking back at the moon landing and Woodstock, exploring classic stories in new ways, tracking the journeys of New Jersey’s innovators, discussing our region’s future, and sharing coming-of-age stories. If you aren’t yet using the library for its programs as well as its collections, please consider joining us.
Photo credit: Andre Levie