9 Reasons to Save Public Libraries

Nine Reasons to Save Public Libraries
ivn.com: 8.08.2012 by Emmily Bristol (Education, Headline, Issues)

While the War on Women and Chick-fil-A might be getting all the juicy headlines lately, there’s another issue quietly smoldering in the background noise of this election season. It’s buried under all the campaign rhetoric and doom-and-gloom forecasts about the economy.

Our public libraries are not just threatened this election season. They’re fighting for their lives — and with them, the livelihoods and well-being of hard-hit communities all over the country. Library districts in California, Illinois, Ohio, Nevada, Texas, Washington, and more have measures or proposals to slash budgets in 2012. California alone is looking at 50% budget cuts. Where I live, the library district is facing a 30% budget cut, which will close at least two branches. According to the American Library Association, 23 states are looking to cut library budgets in the most recent fiscal year.

But I have yet to see a demonstration to save the libraries. Or read national news coverage about the potential collapse of one society’s most valuable resources. Indeed, it wasn’t by accident that our nation’s founding fathers established the first American lending library.

But the truth is that the state of our public libraries is a kind of litmus test of not only our economic health but that of our democracy, too. After all, libraries are the free, democratization of education, unbiased research, and uncensored enlightenment.

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Here are some reasons why our libraries are still the place where we as a nation will achieve our destiny:
1. The house of the 99% . . .
2. Libraries build equity . . .
3. Community hope chest . . .
4. Renewable resource . . .
5. Literacy . . .
6. Leveling the playing field . . .
7. Safe space . . .
8. Cultural touchstone . . .
9. Drop in or drop out: Libraries can also be a place that means the difference between a child’s success or failure in school. Many libraries offer tutoring programs, free classes, as well as access to volumes of information and technology that a kid might not have anywhere else.

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Doesn’t that seem like a space too valuable to lose?  READ IT !