I’ve definitely made clear over the years my love and appreciation for libraries and how librarians are clearly magicians in disguise. Libraries have given me decades of adventures at the tips of my fingers. First, the GIANT (though I didn’t know what I had when I lived there) library of my childhood. Then, the tiny one-room library of my teens (the children’s section of my first library easily dwarfed the entirety of the second one) (thankfully, all the libraries in the county were connected, so if ours didn’t have what we were looking for, the others might). Next came the libraries of my colleges, which I know I didn’t utilize nearly as much as I should have.
Currently, I bounce back between my county library and the one at the college where I work. Though I recently added another – the university library where I live. (In case you didn’t know, most colleges and universities allow community members to hold cards, though there may be some restrictions to it.) Specifically, a part of the library I’ve never utilized – the archives.
Yes, libraries are great places to check out books or use the internet or attend fun programs or join a summer reading challenge. They are also a place that conserves history, generally local history.
After rewatching The Americans too many times (but what is too many, really?), an idea sparked for a KGB story I wanted to write, and for the first time, I saw it placed in my current city. Yes, I could have hopped online and done a little keyboard research, but I thought better of it for this. I reached out to the university archives director and asked if they had anything about KGB activity in the city.
They did not. BUT! She very kindly pointed out that they had a lot of material that would tell me about the city at the time the story would take place. So far, all of my novels and short stories have been contemporary. This is my first official historical fiction piece, and I wanted to do it right.
I also happen to love a good research rabbit hole. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And here’s the best part: I went in with questions, and she had some really smart ones of her own. This is what she does, after all. So while, yes, G00GLE is right there, it’s only going to give you things that match the questions you can come up with (hopefully good things, but not always) – it won’t know to say, “Hey, have you thought about this?”
Moral of the post? If you’ve ever had a wonder about something local, don’t hop online. Reach out to your local archives. You never know where it might lead you. 🙂
Ami Maxine 