Director Joice Himawan arranges a display at Dyer Library in Abington, a privately funded institution available for public use. (GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger)

By SYDNEY SCHWARTZ
The Patriot Ledger

PEMBROKE - Growing up in Pembroke in the 1940s, Janice Ford often spent afternoons doing homework at the Lydia Drake Library.

In those years, Ford said, her mother participated in penny-and bake sales to support the small High Street library that Drake left to the town in 1937.

Ford is now one of about a dozen volunteers who maintain the library as a living relic of years past.

‘‘I miss it if I don’t get to go there. I call it my Lydia Drake Library fix,’’ said Ford, 69. ‘‘It’s peaceful, it’s quiet, it takes me into a different world.’’

In a world of instant information and global communication, most South Shore libraries have become more than just collections of books. With budgets of around $600,000 in larger towns and $2.58 in Quincy, the libraries serve as virtual reference desks where patrons access online databases and request books from other facilities around the region and world.

But a handful of small independent neighborhood libraries like the Lydia Drake still dot the South Shore and southeastern Massachusetts. These decades-old collections are often privately funded and subsist on only a few thousand dollars a year. They support themselves through fundraisers, grants or endowments.

Some remain traditional old fashioned reading rooms, with dark wooden book shelves, braided rugs and card catalogues. Others have carved out their own modern niche.

‘‘It just feels different when you’re in that kind of a library than the newer bigger library,’’ said Vivan Perry, a librarian who retired from the James Library Center for the Arts in Norwell and volunteers at the Lydia Drake.

‘‘There’s something kind of charming about having this kind of thing in a little New England Center,’’ added Caroline Chapin, director of the James Library. ‘‘People value its historic presence.’’

Estimates vary on the number of independent free libraries in the state, and not all are recorded. David Gray, spokesman for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, said there are about 50 to 60 libraries run by private boards. Diane Klaiber, executive manager of the Massachusetts Library Association, estimates more.

On the South Shore alone, there’s the Clift Rogers Library in Marshfield, the Dyer Memorial Library in Abington, the James in Norwell and the Lydia Drake and Cobb in Pembroke.

The Braintree Historical Society has its own library, as does the Hull Lifesaving Museum. The Duxbury Art Complex has the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Library.

‘‘There’s thousands. There’s tons of private libraries in the state of Massachusetts,’’ Klaiber said.

And that, she said, is the problem. Many of these libraries get a little funding from the state or towns and struggle with traditional fundraisers to raise the rest.

‘‘Most of their time goes to fundraising,’’ she said. ‘‘People are looking for programs and what sets you apart. You can’t really set yourself apart if you’re so busy fund-raising.’’

The Lydia Drake gets about $2,500 from the town, along with a matching grant from Duxbury resident Robert MacDonald. But the library only opens one-and-a-half days a week and runs solely with volunteers.

In Marshfield Hills, the Clift Rogers Library, founded in 1897 with $5,000 from leather merchant Clift Rodgers, gets about $1,000 a year from the town. Other funds come from its second floor consignment shop and more traditional fundraisers like a month-long silent auction and book sale and a garden tour.

In Abington, the Dyer Memorial Library, a center for local history and genealogy, lives entirely off a trust from founder Marietta White Dyer, said director Joice Himawan.

But her library, which averages about 1,200 patrons a year, survives because of its specialized collection, Himawan said.

‘‘The stuff that we have here aren’t necessarily available online. So people do come here,’’ she said.

For that reason, Chapin said, the James Library in Norwell, which gets no town funding, decided to change its image about 15 years ago.

The library, which is owned by the Unitarian Church and served as the town library until the 1970s, turned into an arts center. It offers concerts and literary programs. Music teachers rent studio space, and there’s a gallery.

The library still maintains a recreational reading room that’s used mostly by neighborhood residents and music lesson patrons.

‘‘In a small town you don’t need two libraries, so we really morphed. We focused more on the arts,’’ Chapin said. ‘‘The library is just a piece of what we do now. Personally, I think you need to morph to survive.’’

In Braintree, the historical society charges about $10 for research at its new Watson Library and Research Center, a former branch of the Thayer Public Library, which closed in 2002. Historical society members have free access through their $25 a year membership fees.

The Braintree Historical Society rented the facility from the town in 2004. It holds town records, maps, newspapers and photographs, geneology and immigration records and military documents, as well as the archives of Thomas Watson, co-inventor of the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell. The library has a meeting room and a ham radio room. It is still awaiting formal signs and plans to have a grand opening within the next few weeks.

Ford, the Pembroke resident, now lives close to the public library in Pembroke Center, but she prefers to go the three miles to the Lydia Drake.

‘‘I love the place. I think it’s quaint. I think it’s a treasure. I just love being there,’’ she said. ‘‘It would be nice if more people came in.’’

Sydney Schwartz may be reached at sschwartz@ledger.com .

Copyright 2007 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Saturday, May 12, 2007