I grew up in a small town outside of NYC with a tiny public library; in 1988, for my High School AP English Term Paper, I chose a topic so obscure, which was considered to be “too difficult” to complete, yet I persevered, with the help of the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the NYPL, which I traveled to almost every weekend, and with the generous help from their research assistants, I was able access the books I needed to write, “Cubist Influence on Gertrude Stein’s Style of Writing.”