One is never too old to learn. I did some useful learning this week. You see, while I certainly don't claim to know everything, I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable person especially when it comes to Jamaican history, culture and such.

But I was reminded this week that I have a distance yet to travel on the road of knowledge. People, in my over half a century of living on Jamrock, I never realised that the National Library of Jamaica and the National Library Service are two separate and autonomous entities. Did you know either?

Look here nuh, Monday gone, I was going to make the legal deposit of a copy of my book of poetry to the National Library of Jamaica, which is situated on East Street in the downtown Kingston business district, and if I didn't ask questions first, I would have ended up at the most unpleasant part of Tom's anatomy! Which Tom? OK, sorry to confuse you, that reference to Tom and his anatomy is part of a silly little private joke that I should explain.

Makes errors

Hear how it goes; you see, the adult in me knows that it's not nice to derive humour from a situation where somebody makes errors with word use based on genuine ignorance. The child in me, however, always gets a good dose of amusement when I hear people, especially those who should know better, mispronouncing words loudly and emphatically. It's like that time I nearly choked myself to death trying to swallow a 'big dutty laugh', after I overheard a nice, decent-looking teacher lady instructing some students on how to get from Cross Roads to the library at Tom 'Rectum' Drive. I nearly dead!

Joke aside though, I know she really meant Tom Redcam Drive, which is named after an actual person now deceased, [whose real name wasn't even Tom Redcam]. Yeah, man, Tom Redcam is actually MacDermot spelled backwards, and it was the pseudonym for Jamaica's first poet Laureate Thomas MacDermot. Did you know that too? If already you did, well bully for you. And if you didn't, well now you know.

Service points

Yeah, friends and folks, now you know, like how I now know the basic differences between the National Library of Jamaica and the Jamaica Library Service. I now know that Jamaica Library Service or JLS is basically the public lending library with a main library and administrative headquarters in Kingston [yeah, dung a Tom place deh!] plus a network of 513 public library service points and 923 school libraries throughout the island.

The National Library of Jamaica, on the other hand, is a massive research and reference library where you can't borrow books, but you can access a range of archival information and material. They have video, film, microfilm, audiotapes, books, journals, maps, everything.

Oh and one other difference: the National Library of Jamaica is also on Facebook, so you can like dem and friend dem up and learn even more.

Like I said earlier up, we're never too old to learn. We're also never too young. So whether unnu young or old, check out a library nuh! You don't have to be a student. Wherever you are in Jamaica, the Jamaica Library Service has an outlet where you can borrow books - for free! And you don't have to be a researcher or an academic either. You can discover your roots by checking out the National Library of Jamaica.

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