For Immediate Release
Office of Mrs. Bush
April 3, 2001
Remarks by Mrs. Bush for National Library Week Celebration and American Library Association's @ Your Library Event
As delivered.
Thank you very much, Molly, and thank you for the library card.
I'm doubly pleased to be at the Northeast Branch Library - a
beautiful and historic building - to celebrate National Library Week
and to encourage every American to go to your local library and sign up
for a library card.
Having worked as a librarian, libraries are among my favorite
places.
In the words of Washington University Professor William H. Gass:
"The library is meant to satisfy the curiosity of the curious, and
offer to stuff students with facts. It is supposed to supply handbooks
to the handy, novels for insomniacs and scholarship for the scholarly.
And the library, he adds, "provides a place for the lonely where
they may enjoy the companionship and warmth of the word."
I couldn't agree more. And, like many librarians, I have found the
most valuable item in my wallet to be my library card. That's why I am
glad to get my DC library card todayand why I hope Americans will do
the same in their hometowns.
Also, since libraries cannot thrive without the support of the
people they serve, I urge Americans to volunteer for local Friends of
the Library organizations. If your community doesn't have one, consider
starting one, to help your local librariesand your local librarians.
I want to thank the librarians for joining us today. A librarian's
job is an important one. Our nation runs on the fuel of information and
imagination that libraries provide each day, and librarians are in
charge of collecting, cataloguing and distributing it to patrons.
Librarians help educate and inform the public, and by doing so, they
strengthen our great democracy.
The places they work - our libraries - are community treasure
chests, loaded with a wealth of information available to everyone,
equallyAnd the key to that treasure chest is a library card.
I'm proud to join the National Library Week Celebration, and I urge
Americans to sign up for a library cardand dive in to a world of good
reading at your local library.
And now, for the moment baseball fans have been waiting forI'm
pleased to introduce Mike BordickMike, of course, is an All-Star
shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles, and he graciously agreed to put
down his glove and pick up a book and read to our young guests today.
Mike, are you ready?
|