International border line through Haskell Free Library and Opera House, Stanstead, Qubec, Canada, and Derby Line, Vermont, United States, 2019

I first began to appreciate the relationship between libraries and borders when we visited the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in 2005. Incredibly, the building straddles the Canadian American border and is an early twentieth-century expression of international respect and cooperation. That gesture seems quaint today in our era of heightened border security and fear. But I hope that, in the future, more libraries can be built atop political boundaries around the world as a way of building cooperation and promoting peace. What would a library look like on the border between, say, the West Bank and Israel? Or Ukraine and Russia? Or Pakistan and India? Or even a library on the border between Mexico and the United States?