Patients Look Forward To Visits Weekly By Library Ambassadors
Visits from her family and friends, talking with the other little girls in her ward and reading help pass the days of Lois Walsh of 37 Highview Street, a fourth grade pupil at the Balch School who has spent a great deal of the past month at the Norwood Hospital.
Lois is one of the many hospital patients who look forward to Monday afternoons when Mrs. Myron Hallet and Mrs. Harry Fraser come to their bedside pushing the cart from the Morrill Memorial Library. The two women chat with the hospital patients and have made a great many friendships during the time they have been engaged in the library work. During the past year, they have given out almost 4,000 books; in 1947 the total of books circulated at the local hospital through the Morrill Memorial Library was 3,541. In January, they distributed 308 books alone to adults, and 36 to the children patients.
Often Special Requests
Mrs. Hallet and Mrs. Fraser load their library wagon every Monday afternoon at 1:30 with about 75 books. At five o’clock they finish their tour of the wards and the rooms, often returning to the main library with special requests for books not kept on hand in the hospital’s library room. Children who spend some time at the hospital soon find that the librarians have come to know their age and
tastes in literature and that they bring books especially selected for them. Other patients confined for some weeks often take the oppor-tunity to catch up on new pubfications about their hobbies; for instance, one man made a complete study of home gardening while he was convalescing.
Each patient has a special request when the librarians appear on their weekly visit and the book is not at hand, a page is sent down from the Morrill Memorial Library with the request as soon as possible.
A special publication, the “Hospital Book Guide,” is used for the selection of books purchased for the hospital. The books are of wide variety, but needless to say, they avoid the topic of illness almost completely. New books and lighter fiction is generally preferred by the hospital inmates.
After the patient has finished his book, his nurse places it in one of the two deposit books at the hospital and it is then returned to the library room. For the past five years this system has been in operation and while it gives the greatest pleasure and diversion to the patients, the librarians enjoy their hospital visit just as much.
The Norwood people whom they come to know through illness and recovery remain familiar to them as visitors to the Morrill Memorial, often taking out a card in order to finish reading what they began at the hospital. And one of the most enthusiastic and interested persons is Mr. Robert Brown, hospital administrator, who wonders how the hospital got along before the service was put in operation.
(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)