Books selected at the Library of Congress found their way Tuesday to library shelves in southern West Virginia as part of an ongoing program that brings new reading experiences to rural communities.
U.S. Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., stopped at the McDowell County Public Library in downtown Welch where a tree-shaped stack of new library books was waiting for her arrival. More than 300 books from the Library of Congress that are now in the Welch, WV, library are also going to library shelves across the county.
“I love to read,” Miller said. “My granddaughters, my grandsons, they are all great readers. It opens the world to you.”
Miller said her first major in college was history and added that thanks to what she read while studying in college, she learned about people in other countries and how to use that information in Congress.
“Thank you all for being here, and this is exciting,” she told guests at the presentation.
“It certainly is. And thank you for all these books,” said Martha Callaway, president of the McDowell County Library’s board of directors.
“You’re welcome,” Miller said. “We had fun picking them out.”
The program allows members of Congress to select books from the Library of Congress’s collections and send them to libraries in their states.
“One of the opportunities that we have in Congress is to donate books to libraries,” Miller said. “And my state and my district of southern West Virginia, with all the little nooks and crannies and the small towns and the areas we have can be isolated. I want to make sure they have the opportunity to have as many books as possible. And I’m an avid reader. I know how my world has gotten so much broader with all the things that I’ve been able to read that I’m just grateful I can do this. It’s a nice perk that we have on Congress, to be able to donate these books.”
And there are a lot of books to choose from at the Library of Congress.
“The Library of Congress has these huge collections,” Miller said. “You go in and you pull them. They’re constantly getting books in and I’ve done this for a couple of years now.”
Books for children, young adults and older readers were among the donated books arriving from the nation’s capitol.
“Absolutely,” Miller said. “It isn’t just children that we want to read. People my age read. People older than my age love to read and that’s the last thing I do before I go to bed at night, read a couple more pages and then turn out the light. Literacy is so important in our smaller towns. We want to make sure they have all the opportunities they need to make sure our children are well educated.”
Smaller libraries had a hard time getting new books during the recent pandemic.
“We are so fortunate to get new books because funding for small libraries throughout the state depends on donations a lot of times, and through Covid and everything we lost a lot of donations, so we weren’t able to buy new books in many cases,” Calloway said later.
The McDowell County Public Library has branches in War, Bradshaw and Iaeger. Books bringing readers new stories, topics and information will go on their shelves.
“We’ll share these books with those branches and this will help tremendously for new interests. I understand we have a book that talks about using a rotary phone, dialing a phone,” Calloway said.
She laughed. “Now children don’t know what that is anymore! We are very fortunate and blessed to have this gift today. This is just a true blessing.”