“Something wonderful

is being built in the world...”

From the start Richard Rodriquez captured his audience with an emotionally charged keynote address. The 500+ audience at the Merrill-Cazier Library Dedication learned that Rodriquez is a cancer survivor as he recounted an experience two years ago of sitting in a room full of “shockingly young” people receiving chemotherapy treatments. For this and other reasons, he admitted to being sentimental lately, and his passion for libraries was immediately clear.

“Here I am at the creation, at the opening of the building of a library. And it is extraordinary to me that something is being built in the world. Something wonderful is being built in the world of concrete and mortar and steel. Something is being built against the sky, in the sky. Something is being built for the future for people we don’t even know yet. People who will use this building generations to come we say, lives upon lives, strangers upon strangers.”

He continued by describing the role libraries have played in his life. “I am not a stranger to buildings like this. I was a child who spent hours and hours, the happiest hours of my life in libraries.” Rodriquez spoke of being a boy “who wanted very much to learn what’s inside this room, what’s inside this building. What does this building know that I need to know? How can I take it into myself? How can I absorb it? How can I make this mine? I wanted the library to make me knowledgeable. To give me this voice.”

The audience was treated to a passionate, honest, personal account of the importance of libraries, and his very strong opinion that we cannot replace books with technology, wisdom with information, or libraries with Google. He admitted, “I Google as much as you Google. I Google in my sleep. I’ve Googled myself to sleep. I use it for information. I don’t use it for wisdom. I go to the library for wisdom.”^[2]

—Kim Winger, Marketing/PR/Events, Merrill-Cazier Library