Good morning to everyone.
I am pleased to be here this morning to speak on behalf of our Premier Dr. the Honourable D. Orlando Smith who is presently in St. Vincent and the Grenadines attending sessions for the 55th Meeting of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Authority.
Students of the Elmore Stoutt High School, today is a new beginning for you and for the life of this institution.
Libraries are precious and wonderful places. They are the repositories of human learning throughout the ages. The books on their shelves contain entire worlds, stories of great imagination, histories of the great and the good. In our libraries, the peoples of the world have ever sought to enshrine knowledge and make it available to all who would enter.
The Elmore Stoutt High School Library is small but, by its existence, it follows in a tradition as ancient as the great city of Alexandria where the scholars tell us a wondrous library once stood.
Libraries do much more than merely hold the knowledge of the ages within their walls - they are a tangible expression of the people’s right to that knowledge. Libraries throw open their doors and bid one and all, ‘come,’ and ‘learn.’ They are a symbol of democracy at its best and that is why I am so pleased that Minister Walwyn, from his very start as Minister for Education and Culture, made the restoration of this library one of his priorities.
Years ago, the ancient libraries of Sumeria were full of clay tablets. Then came the invention of papyrus paper and scrolls filled the shelves and cubicles, instead. Now, we are in another age, and libraries must once again transform themselves to meet the needs of a new generation while remaining true to their mission of making knowledge available to all.
As great as they are, the world’s libraries were still limited by their space. Even the greatest of modern libraries, the British Library and the Library of Congress, are limited in concrete terms by the walls of which they are made, however enormous. Until this age, until the age of the Internet, libraries were constrained by their size.
The Internet has obliterated those constraints. In this renovated library, teachers and students will now have access to online library resources, e-books and teaching aids. Using the power of the Internet, this library can now truly bring the world’s learning in within its walls. Everything that you can possibly want to know is already on the Internet or is certainly making its way there.
The world is there, within these computers that LIME has so kindly provided. It is my most fervent wish that the students and teachers of the school will use this library and resource center well. That you will be proud of it and make sure it is kept in good condition.
Our society and our world have changed and are changing rapidly but books can help you to make sense of those changes and to understand your role in life as a Virgin Islander and as a human being.
I hope that you will see this library as a sanctuary, a place of tranquility, where you will always be welcome and where the world of learning will always be waiting for you.
I want to express my gratitude to Mrs. Jennie Wheatley who saw the need for a library and got it going back in 1970. I should also like to thank all the librarians who kept it going, starting with Mrs. Eugenie Glasgow who, I believe, was the first to have done that.
Minister Walwyn, Principal Ms. Amey and everybody who worked hard to re-open the library and restore it to its rightful honour on this campus is owed a debt of gratitude.
May the learning you do here do honour to the work of the people who have made this library a reality and who have put it at your disposal.
Thank you.
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