Lisa Botshon, Curtis Memorial Library

When I was a child, my grandfather kept his heavy Webster's Third New International Dictionary on a midcentury oak side table by his desk. Nothing else was on that table, although underneath was a little drawer with a large knob in which he kept an old tobacco pipe or two that he no longer smoked.

Earlier this spring, Curtis Memorial Library screened a special presentation of "Free for All: The Public Library," a documentary about how the library became an American civic institution (now streaming on PBS). We were fortunate to be joined by Abby Van Slyck, an architectural historian featured in the documentary who is an expert on the history of libraries.

When I was 11, my parents moved our family from a small apartment in the Bronx to a 200-year-old farm about 70 miles from New York City. There, we experienced our first power outages.

As an English professor, a chronic feature of my desk is at least one teetering stack of library books perched on a corner. During times of active research, especially during the summer, there are usually several such stacks, enough to obscure one of my windows.