•June 28, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

As a grade schooler, I was captivated by the stereopticon at the Toulon (Ill.) Public Library, and its sepia-and-cream Matthew Brady photographs of the immediate aftermath of Civil War battles, the dead strewn higgledy-piggledy across pock-marked ground.

As a student in Urbana-Champaign, I spent evenings in the reading room in the Main Library at the University of Illinois, home to one of our truly great American research libraries.

Sitting at a huge oak table in the cavernous room, this small-town boy had a reverence for the hushed setting and the gothic windows that soared high toward the starry sky. I thumbed through the thick green Readers’ Guide to Periodic Literature, hoping to find a few articles in an evening’s work to complete a term paper.

Today, I work mornings in my home office, then take off for a rural or small college library in my area, to read, and maybe poke around a little. Then I walk a country road nearby. Nice day.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.