This image right here is one of the main reasons for this blog. Too often, libraries are seen as luxuries, or something to be cut because only a segment of the population uses them. A lot of times, libraries and library users are invisible.
Free libraries, especially public libraries, perform an amazing array of civic services: educating the public, especially segments that lack the resources, or the educational opportunities of others, provide information about, and sometimes access to social services, job hunting assistance, tax assistance, voting information and registration, the acquiring of new marketable skills, medical information, car manuals to allow people to perform their own work on their vehicles, guides to gardening, mental, emotional and relationship health, parenting, coping with disabilities, animal care, and a million other topics and services.
Everything from teaching basic computer skills to help someone fill out online applications to providing information on what social services are available, and how to reach the various offices. But we don't really like THOSE people, the unwashed masses--the underprivileged. Even those who need the guidance and reference assistance that a librarian can provide to point them in the right direction are looked down upon in this society.
We believe that people should "do for themselves," but we don't want to provide even the barest of means for them to do so. The library used to be the great equalizer. If one could read (or was willing to attend literacy classes at the library), and had the motivation to learn on one's own, great things were possible with the aid of a library. I won't put rose colored glasses on the past, and say that this was some beautiful golden age, but libraries WERE at the center of the community, and were available for people to better themselves.
I think taking that away, or reducing access and services is hurting the people we always hurt most with budget and program cuts--the most vulnerable of our population. Libraries are one of the many ways we provide a hand up to those in need. Honestly--I wouldn't be literate and educated without libraries. I grew up extremely disadvantaged. Access to books on any topic that struck my fancy fostered a love for learning and a thirst for knowledge I wouldn't have, otherwise.
Some arguments include that less people are using the library, etc. It's my belief that we should be promoting library usage. And it shouldn't just be the job of the librarian to get the word out into the community that the library is a community hub, but the library should have the support of the local government and community leaders to promote the value and use of the library to the people of its' community. If the city does not treat the library as a valuable and valued resource, the people of the community certainly will not. Some libraries are greatly involved in the cultural life of their communities. The Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, PA is one place I can think of off the top of my head. The involvement goes both ways--the library reaches out, but other institutions reach toward the library to keep it an important community asset.
Running a library properly, and in a manner that keeps it a viable community resource costs money. I know that is tough to come by in these times. However, like education, I wonder what the cost is of NOT having a vibrant library program, and I suspect it is one we may not feel the full effects of now. We will be much further down the road, ten or twenty years' time, perhaps, before we see what we've wrought.
What happens when we don't foster a curiosity and a love of learning in our children at a young age? What happens if we don't teach them, through use, how to find the answers and resources that they're looking for, and are available to them in a library? What happens when we take away job and social resources from people on the verge of either breaking out of their situation, or slipping more permanently into decline? Will we even recognize WHY this has happened, or blame it on the victims, instead of the people who had the power to make a difference and chose to save a meager few thousand dollars on a line item in a budget? I'm afraid we may not figure it out until its too late.
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