Another stop on the Montgomery County PA library tour! If you want to know what I am talking about, look here.

On February 11, 2023, my husband and I visited the Perkiomen Valley Library in Schwenksville, PA. This library is located about 30 miles northwest of my house. I’m very familiar with this area, though it’s not close to where I live.

For one thing, when I first met my husband, he lived in a condo development within sight of this library.

Secondly, the Perkiomen Trail passes through town. If you follow my personal blog, you know that during the pandemic we walked the whole length of this trail (20 miles) twice. Though not all at once! Look here for a description of the Schwenksville section and to see some views of the town.

And lastly, a favorite destination of ours is nearby – Ott’s Exotic Plants. Take a look here and feast your eyes on a huge greenhouse of flowers and plants.

But I’m digressing. Let me get you back to the library. It’s located up a hill (this area is very hilly as it rises above the Perkiomen Creek) about a block off Main Street.

Like a couple of other sites we have visited (Upper Perkiomen Valley and Royersford), this library is a branch of the main library in our county, Montgomery County Public Library in Norristown. Like many of the libraries around here, it was founded by local people as an independent library and later became part of the county system.

The building it occupies was purpose-built and opened in 1957.

Inside, I introduced myself to the librarians (requirement #1 of the tour) and got a quick bit of info on the layout. There’s a larger room with the circulation desk, mostly devoted to children’s books, new adult books, and DVD’s and audio materials.

There is another room for adult selections.

And there is a perfect little spot for sitting and reading tucked next to the circulation desk. This cozy room is where my husband waited while I wandered around the stacks.

I did spend some time looking at an exhibit in this room to learn more about the founding and development of the library. The library’s website has more information about its history. I am struck by how I am already seeing a pattern: a town grows and at some point wishes for its citizens to have the benefits of a library. People band together and make it happen, often in a very small way at first and then later, as the community enlarges, the library does too.

All right. I had a couple of other requirements to fulfill. My second task was to find some books to check out. That didn’t take any effort at all. In fact, I got a little too engrossed and found myself standing in the aisle reading. I got hold of myself and picked out some books to take home.

My last requirement was to write something while in the library. Once again, I decided to collect book titles for haiku. This library is small and there isn’t much room to sit down and work. And…my husband, while very patient, could not be expected to sit and wait indefinitely! So I took my notebook around the room and picked out titles or fragments of titles to work into poetry later on.

OK! It was time to go. I checked out my books and we headed out the door. As we went around the building, I remembered to snap a picture from another angle. Guess what, this building has a community room in the walk-out basement. People can rent it for functions or the library uses it for activities. On this day, they were holding a bingo event for kids.

Thank you, Perkiomen Valley Library!

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Here are a few haiku from the book titles I gathered on this visit.

1242.
the lonely sister
shelves her collected stories
below eye level

1243.
last chance this summer –
clear up those complications –
what? and miss more fun?

1244.
two years tomorrow
the last and best friend you had
cursed you out and ran