The story of a community
is not easily told, but that is exactly what has been done in Lorrie Harrison’s new book, “Lopez Island Library: Sixty Years of Memories.”
Originally prompted by a generous donation made in the memory of Doris Nason, the Friends of the Lopez Island Library commissioned Harrison to tell the story of the heart and soul of Lopez: the Lopez Island Library.
Later this month, Lorrie Harrison, the book’s technical wizard, Charles Givens, and other key figures in the history of the Lopez Island Library and the development of this project will be honored by the Friends with a special invitation-only presentation of the newly published book.
The book will go on sale as part of the Friends’ ongoing fundraising efforts the day after Thanksgiving at the annual Fall Book Sale. Only a limited number of books will be available that day, so orders may be placed by contacting any member of the Friends of Lopez Library. All proceeds will go to the Friends.
When the Friends of the Lopez Island Library were first approached by the Lopez Island Library Board of Trustees with the request that Doris Nason’s gift provide the seed funding to research and write the history of the library, it was based on the very real knowledge that, with each long-time Lopezian’s passing, much valuable, irreplaceable information was being lost.
The Friends wasted no time in agreeing to support this endeavor. In late 2006 Shannon Wilbur and Barbara Mino volunteered to oversee and direct the project.
After meeting with Mark Thompson-Klein of the Lopez Island Historical Society, a proposal to hire Lorrie Harrison and begin work on a book that would comprehensively detail the library’s story was approved by the Friends of the Lopez Island Library.
Harrison decided to eschew the word “history” when Julie Van Camp suggested that she approach the book as a work of “community genealogy rather than formal history.
“That the word history no longer fit. It had become our living story, full of insights, perceptions, memories, and inconsistencies, a free-flowing community memoir.”
One of the biggest problems Harrison faced was dealing with the extensive array of material available.
In order to keep the book from being prohibitively expensive to publish and purchase, she had to revise the format, as well as carefully distill the content.
She did so successfully. The final copy of “Lopez Island Library: Sixty Years of Memory” is still rich with photographs and islanders’ personal reminiscences.
Among its offerings is a self-guided tour of the library that contains little-known facts that will delight and inform even the most seasoned Lopez Island Library patron.
Of all the projects Lorrie Harrison has worked on throughout her career, she considers this book one of the most satisfying, despite the fact that she had to abandon her belief that she could write a factual history.
The joy, she says, came in the understanding that it was the stories of individual islanders that makes “Lopez Island Library: Sixty Years of Memory” a much richer story of an entire community than a simple history could have ever done.
