| His Own Words ... On Libraries
“What is a library? At the high school now, they call the library the media center. I don’t like that word much because it has such a cold, technological ring to it. To me, really, a library is more an attitude of mind that can be reflected in many ways.
What do you dedicate a library to? First, we’d mention dedication to children. It is a satisfaction to see children al over the place looking at books. Last night, I read Longfellow’s poem about the story hour. I think if every parent of young children was required to read that poem about the children who climbed up on grandfather’s lap while he read to them, and the joy they felt, they’d want to have something like that going on.
 We’d want to dedicate the library to the love of learning. There is a love of learning that sometimes gets lost. Young children are so eager for information. Parents can be driven wild with youngsters who keep saying, ‘Why? Why?’ It’s wonderful to have that desire to know. The inquiring mind of a child is a blessing that people can retain as long as they live.
Another dedication could be to lifetime learning. Today, to go to school, go to college, get training, get degrees, and stop there? That’s fatal economically. There’s so much new information being generated that unless people are constantly renewing themselves, they become obsolete. As a judge once told a lawyer who had been practicing for a long time, ‘You know, all the laws you know have been repealed and replaced.’
Along with these go freedom of expression. There you get into an area that has been a controversy in society for hundreds of years. John Milton, who ranks with Shakespeare as one of the greatest literary figures, wrote one of the finest appeals to the English government to not censure literature. I once talked with one of the executives of the university about some of the rules and regulations the American Association of University Professors that can get in the way of the freedom and initiative you like to have. He said, ‘Elmer, there are abuses and it is bad, but the alternative is so much worse.’ Freedom of expression can be abused and sometimes can be irritating. It can sometimes be downright offensive, but the alternative is so much worse. When you lose freedom, you lose the essence of life itself. Freedom! Freedom is a dedicatory word that should hang in every library.
The library can set a standard. There can be the finest life that anybody ever hasd in all the history of this world right here in Princeton, partly by what’s here, partly by what we can now reach through an information network all over the world. This is an incredible time to be alive.”
--from Elmer L. Andersen’s speech at the dedication of the public library in Princeton, Minnesota, on September 23, 1995. From Andersen’s I Trust to be Believed (Lori Sturdevant, ed.), Nodin Press, 2004. Reproduced with permission.
“Eleanor and I have had a special attachment to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum since its founding in the late 1950s. It brought together several of our interests in a remarkable way. We were both lovers of nature.
 Then there was our love of books, and our idea that the arboretum might include a horticultural library. I loved seeking out books that would contribute to such a library. Through years of studying and collecting books, I came to know about herbals and botanicals—beautiful catalogs of flowers and plants, prepared and published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and prized for medical as well as horticultural purposes.
I love sharing things we have learned and the joy we have derived from our involvement with the arboretum’s Andersen Horticultural Library.”
-- From Andersen’s I Trust to be Believed (Lori Sturdevant, ed.), Nodin Press, 2004. Reproduced with permission.
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