From the Library: Libraries are an investment in the future

This past week I had to say a bittersweet goodbye to my youngest daughter as she left for a year to study in Ireland. She will complete an MBA program in International Marketing at the University College Dublin.

Why the bitter and the sweet? I am sad because I will miss her terribly even though she hasn’t lived at home for several years. It is also satisfyingly sweet because I am just about bursting with pride; she is brave and smart and I’ve managed to teach her well that education is one of the true investments in her life.

Ciara (the Gaelic name is pronounced “kira”) has dual Irish/American citizenship because she was born there when our family lived there in the 1980s. When we left Ireland for good in 1984 we found that we had saved buckets of Irish pence and halfpence and other troublesome coins heavier or tinier or strangely-shaped compared to our familiar U.S. coins. While we lived in Ireland we found the money cumbersome and confusing and rarely carried any with us, preferring instead to empty our pockets into jars tucked into cupboards around the house.

When we prepared to return to the States and I was packing up our household 25 years ago, one of my last tasks was to truck the coins to a local Irish bank. I chose the EBS or Educational Building Society and deposited the heavy packets of coin into an account for my daughter who was only five months old. I had fantasies that the 50 plus Irish punts (or Irish “pounds” worth about $99 at the time) would grow and be somewhat meaningful to her one day.

She had a “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” or so we told her over the years. We added gift amounts to the fund a few times early on and that money accrued interest for the last quarter of a century when we basically forgot about it in the last two decades.

What possible connection to the library can I make here? The lesson, of course, is that investing in the future might not make much sense in the pennies or pence of today. It isn’t always in the forefront of our minds that our hard-earned pennies and quarters and dollars will someday prove to be such a worthwhile investment. Yet, the Norwood community has always had this eye on the future.

In the last decade of the 20th Century, in the 1890s, Norwood built the Morrill Memorial Library. In 1928 and 1965 the townspeople invested in library additions. In 2000 the library was renovated for a new century. In 2008 the Norwood community realized that an investment in a new high school would see returns well into our 21st Century. Norwood has always known that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the present and future generations of students who enroll in their schools and who visit their library.

Investment is what happens behind the scenes while we aren’t looking.

The little nest egg of coins in an Irish bank has grown and been converted to Euros and is worth nearly $1,000. Amazingly, after 25 years, and when we weren’t looking, that account will pay for my daughter’s school books for the year…and perhaps it will also afford phone cards, subway fares, coffee, or other necessities.

The Morrill Memorial Library and the Norwood Public Schools have returned on your investments many times over. The children of the Norwood’s past and the future will return over and over to the library where a “pot of gold” awaits. Be sure to make regular visits to your library now that the school year begins.

Visit our Web site, www. norwoodlibrary.org or call 781-769-0200. We look forward to seeing you in the library.

Charlotte Canelli is library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood.