Sally Ride on Libraries
Channel: AtYourLibraryOrg
Date: 2012-07-25

On July 23, 2012 Sally Ride, physicist and  first American woman to fly in space succumbed to pancreatic cancer.
She was a hero to generations of adventurous young girls and founded the company Sally Ride Science to inspire young people, especially girls, to stick with their interest in science, to become scientifically literate, and to consider pursuing careers in science and engineering.

We asked Sally Ride for her thoughts on libraries during the 2008 American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.

I remember going into the community library probably when I was 8,9, 10 years old and that was just the coolest place because it was where I could go and just rummage through books and find whatever book I wanted, find a table, just kind of lay out all my stuff on the table...do my homework, but more actually, important, just kind of browse through books. I have every very fond memories of community libraries.

When I was oin college I went to school at Stanford University and so, of course, I frequented the Stanford Library probably every day.

Actually, what I've discovered is that the library now is a good resource just for logging onto the Internet and getting information, so I tend not to use it in day to day life, unless it's for a science periodical, or science journal that I don't happen to subscribe to. So it's for technical books primarily.

It has been helpful in my career development. When I entered the Astronaut Corps, there was a lot of information that  we had to learn about the history of the space program and about the technical side of some of the things that I hadn't learned in school, and there's no better place to learn about that or to find all the technical books than a library.  Especially since at a  bookstore, if you're lucky enough to be able to  find one, it's probably going to cost you an arm and a leg.  So libraries were very helpful.


[Libraries in space?]
Well, I think the future of libraries in space are going to be digital libraries.  You do not want to be carrying paper and books into space because you'd have to build a bigger and bigger rocket to launch them. So I think it will be digital libraries exclusively.

She co-authored, with longtime life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy, many books on science for young people including Mission planet Earth : our world and its climate - and how humans are changing them (2009), Exploring Our Solar System (2003) and The third planet : exploring the Earth from space (2003).

We asked Sally Ride for her thoughts on libraries during the 2008 American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California.