Before we left New Mexico, Annie set up a tour of the New Mexico State Library with her friend, Brigitte! I was pretty excited about this because Eliza’s great-grandmother, Margaret Wynn, was a librarian. Here’s Brigitte and me outside the library!
All the books in these bookshelves are either about New Mexico or they are written by people who live in New Mexico. I didn’t realize how many books there are about New Mexico! I looked at some of them but they were really heavy and had a lot of big words, so I asked Brigitte if there were any New Mexico books for a first-grader.
And, look, we found some! I was sooo happy! I wanted to read all of them, but then we wouldn’t finish the library tour!
Did you know that libraries have more than books? This library has MAPS! I love maps!!! And since I’ve spent a lot of time in New Mexico, I really liked this map showing all the geology of the state. I could see where we camped!
Then it was time for a break, so we sat in the main reading room. People can come here and borrow books and then read them in a quiet and sunny place! It’s empty right now because the library isn’t open yet today. Yes, we got a VIP behind-the-scenes tour before the library opened for business!
Because it’s the State Library, they have copies of every newspaper published in the entire state! This is me, sitting in the middle of all of the newspapers. It would take me forever to read even one day of every newspaper they have!
Then we had a special treat – we got to meet Kathleen Moeller-Peiffer, the State Librarian! She’s in charge of the whole library!! She was really nice! And we got to take a picture in her office, that’s me on the left, in case you can’t tell 🙂
Then we went to Brigitte’s office, she’s the Lead Cataloger for the library. That means she is in charge of deciding where all the books and magazines and maps and everything goes, so that people can find them whenever they want. It’s a big job!
And then, our tour was over and it was time for lunch! We met Kristi, an old friend of Annie’s and here’s us all having a ladies’ lunch in Santa Fe.
If you want to learn more about the New Mexico State Library, you can check out their website. I want to come back some day and read ALL the books in this library so I can learn all about New Mexico!
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
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