Director proud her library is ‘heartbeat’

Nashua is close to having a fully automated library, but even when the last of the facility’s more than 24,000 items are entered into the computer system, one thing will remain the same.The card catalog is staying put.“I just can’t see not having it,” Library Director Heather Hackman said. “It’s the original card catalog that was in the 1906 Carnegie Library, and there’s just way too much history to let it go.”Make no mistake about it, Heather Hackman loves libraries; after all, she’s been working in them since she was 13 years old.When she says “libraries are the heart of a community,” she says it emphatically.When she says “libraries are for everyone — old, young, rich, poor —” she says it with absolute certainty.When she says “libraries like ours will always be here,” she says it unequivocally.Not that libraries haven’t changed since the good citizens of Nashua held a “book shower” and opened a library in a room over the Bartish and Nafus Racket Store on Main Street in 1902.“Books will always be the hallmark of a library,” she said, “but at the same time, I don’t think people have any idea what we do here.” 
For more of this story, see Thursday's Nashua Reporter