As anyone who has lived on Martha’s Vineyard as long as I have — or even longer — knows, the price of food, housing, and just about everything was pretty steady for a few years after World War II. When we built our four-bedroom house in West Tisbury in 1957, it cost us $16, 500. Our yearly tax bill started out at $192.60. In 50 years the annual tax bill had risen to over $10,000 and the value of our property to almost $2 million.

And we all know that the best things in life are free — things like love, friendship, wildflowers, sunshine, etc., but mostly the price of everything else continues to rise. But there is one thing that has not risen in price at all. Books and magazines and newspapers are free to borrow and read if you have a public library nearby. And, thanks mainly to Andrew Carnegie, the patron saint of libraries, 1,681 free public libraries were built between 1881 and the early 1920s in this country.

In 1947 when I first came to the Vineyard as the 21-year-old bride of Johnny Mayhew, the West Tisbury library was located in a small building on Music street. It had originally been built as an adjunct to the Dukes County Academy to be used as a study hall and a dormitory. Before the academy building became our town hall, it had served as a one-room schoolhouse for many years. Not only did my three children attend that small school, but my husband remembered being there in the first grade in the mid-1920s.

During my early years in West Tisbury, the library was only open for two afternoons a week, and the librarian was a stern woman with high principles who, it is told, crossed out every swear word in every new book the library received — then she hid the book in her desk and would only sign it out on request.

At first the entire collection of books was shelved on the first floor and the second floor was used for storage, but by the mid 1960s the library had progressed to using the second story as a children’s room, and for one year I was the children’s librarian. On Wednesday afternoons, Priscilla Fischer, the teacher of the first four grades, would send the fourth graders, a few at a time, scurrying across the field to the library, to choose a book to sign out. I will always remember the little boy who would only take out books about dinosaurs.

I don’t think there were any requirements for being a librarian back in those days. I certainly didn’t have any library skills. A knowledge of how the Dewey decimal system worked, and how to find a book in the card catalogue was all I knew about being a librarian. And at that time, that was all I needed to know.

Gradually our town population began to grow, and many of the newcomers were readers. We outgrew the little Music street library and plans were made to build a new library. Land behind the Howes House was donated to West Tisbury by the Jones family and in 1993 a large, attractive new library was opened to the public. As the population increased, so did technology, and it wasn’t long before we needed new space for computers, videos and talking books, as well as books in print. And then came the Kindle, an electronic device that one can enter an entire book on — many books, in fact.

Borrowers from some of the other towns began to appear, and our annual summer book sale became famous — many of the members of Friends of the West Tisbury Library worked hard for weeks to categorize and sort the thousands of donated books arranged by subject on long tables in the school gym. A recent count showed that 85 per cent of West Tisbury residents have library cards. I miss the old cards that you had to sign — they told you who had read the book you had chosen, and therefore you might get some positive — or negative — opinions about it. But the new CLAMS cards are even better. They list some forty libraries on the Cape and Islands and tell you which one might have your desired book. Then our library can get it for you in a few days.

The West Tisbury Library Foundation was formed to raise $2 million in private donations to help fund the recent renovation and expansion of the library building. Now that the facility is open, the foundation funds many of the things that make our library special: the gardens the computers, and especially the programs in the McCullough room. Musicians from the New England Conservatory in Boston have presented several concerts, one on familiar music from operas. This group of three musicians is called The Music Street Musicians, which is heartwarming to me as I lived on Music street for more than 50 years. There are occasional jazz concerts for those who are not into classical music.

I can no longer take myself to the library to browse among the new books, but I have lived long enough to learn how to use my computer to find out if my library has the book I want. If they do, they will hold it for me, and if they don’t, they will get it for me from a library that does have it. My daughter Deborah will pick it up and return it for me.

Our library, with its comfy chairs and endless supply of magazines and beautiful murals by Linda Carnegie and a changing display of art by local artists, as well as thousands of books, is a perfect place to spend some down time — especially when the gardens are in bloom.

Shirley Mayhew lives in West Tisbury.