Flat Matthew volunteers at the library

When I was about nine years old -- which was 50 years ago -- I was a student worker in the library in my elementary school. I continued to work in libraries in school and college. Now I volunteer at the Kilbourn Public Library in Wisconsin Dells. Today Flat Matthew went with me to help out. (You can tell I didn't take that photograph today, can't you?)

When I was in elementary school, libraries were places where you checked out books. Today people come to the library for books, music CDs, books on CDs and cassettes, movies on DVDs and videos, and they also come to use the computers. In Wisconsin Dells, where we have lots of college-age students from places like Russia and Poland in the summer, they come to the library to use the language lab and learn or improve their English. We have a whole section of books in Polish, as well as lots of books on how to speak and read English.


There are a lot of volunteers at the Kilbourn Public Library, and we do many things to help the regular librarians. Above is a picture of Stephanie, and today she showed Flat Matthew how she was sorting through the movies that had been returned. Stephanie helps find the library card for each movie and returns the movie to its proper place on the shelf. She and I joke that it is a never-ending task. Stephanie volunteers at the library almost every day.

What I usually do at the library is called The List. That is the list of books and other items that other libraries in south central Wisconsin want to borrow from us for one of their patrons. So I get the list from the computer --today there were 54 items, which is about normal -- and go around to locate everything I can. Not everyone likes doing The List, but for me it is like a treasure hunt. I am learning where everything is in the library, and I get to see books that I may want to read myself. Sometimes finding books is more difficult than others. Here is a picture of Flat Matthew slipping between books to see if he can find one I am missing.

Today the list included regular books, DVDs, CDs, videos and some books on tape and CD, too. It took me about an hour to find everything. While I was looking for something, Flat Matthew guarded the cart that had the books I had already found. After I found all that I could, I took them to the computer where I scanned the bar code on the book cover. The computer then told me where to send it, and I put a sticky-note on the cover and put the book into a red box so that it could be sent out to the library that was requesting it. We have two stacks of boxes because the books go to different parts of Wisconsin. Flat Matthew climbed up between the boxes to look at all the things that were going to other libraries today. By the time we finished, the stack of boxes was higher than when he climbed it.

When we were done with everything and ready to go home, I had a book to check out for myself, and Laura -- one of the regular librarians -- did that for me while Flat Matthew watched. If you look carefully, you can see Stephanie in the background keeping an eye on everything.

Most of the librarians knew the story about Flat Stanley, and they were happy to meet Flat Matthew. They wanted him to come back and volunteer every week, but I explained that he would only be with us for a few more weeks.

Round Matthew and his parents volunteer at the Riverside & Great Northern Railway in the Dells, which is where Tom and I met them. Volunteering is a great way to learn new things, meet new people and help your community while you are having fun. Maybe you would like to volunteer at your library or some other place near your home.

Michael