Monteverde is a mountain town of approximately
250-300 people, located three and a half hours from the San Jose, the capital
of Costa Rica. It’s the kind of town in
which there’s a whole lot of friendliness, some tourism, and many small shops,
but not the kind of place for a rather large English-language library in the
midst of a Spanish speaking country, I presumed. Just
by chance I learned that my presumptions were profoundly incorrect. I had the serendipitous opportunity to visit
the very interesting Friends' Library supported and maintained solely by volunteers
who are the founding ancestors of Monteverde, the Quakers (again, another
surprise). It is surprisingly large, containing more than 18,500 books in English and 2,500 books in Spanish, making this one of the largest English-language libraries in Central America.
The interior space is cleverly divided into three-levels: the top level houses the adult materials, the middle level contains the middle school level books, and the elementary level books are found on the bottom level. An old-fashioned, typed card catalog is maintained for the users to look up and locate books which are shelved according to the Dewey Decimal System.
As a librarian, it was an amazing experience for me to see such a highly organized, well-maintained library completely kept up by volunteers and open to all users situated just off of a bumpy, sort of paved road, 4,600 above sea level in the mountainous cloud forests of Costa Rica.
As a Texan who has traveled abroad, I always seem to find other Texans far from our Lone Star state, and this trip was no different.
1 comment:
Thank you very much for sharing information about this library. How interesting. Yep, the world keeps getting smaller and smaller; hard to anticipate what paths will cross where.
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