The scenario: your business is doing very well with sales up 10%-20% per month. The number of people visiting your business has increased even more than that rate. You decide to close your store. What?
Some successful public libraries are slated for closure because municipalities can not afford to keep them open. In Philadelphia, the mayor recommended closing as many as 11 branch libraries. The difference in Mayor Nutter’s plan from other times when libraries in the U.S. were shuttered is that these branch libraries will not reopen in the future when the economy improves.
Most of the newspaper and TV stories about libraries and increased usage have focused on libraries as a substitute for bookstores because people can no longer afford to buy books, DVDs and magazines. This is par for the course but, also, very unfortunate because those interest stories hide the broader meaning of libraries from their communities.
ALA is using it’s lobbying muscle to promote libraries as a public source for resources that train our workforce and as a free Internet access point. Many employers use online-only forms for prospective new hires. Libraries also are centers for print and online test preparation manuals including GED, resume and cover letter preparation, math and English brush-up skill books, and searching in databases that are not part of Google. ALA is requesting $100 million for these kinds of resources and services as part of any economic stimulus package .
ALA is also currently fighting to include $171.5 million in LSTA grants to state library programs in a FY 2009 spending bill. These grants were cut this fiscal year and, in Maine, ended the State Library’s financical contributions to the Summer Reading program, decreased the large print book budget, ended the catalog card service to small libraries, decreased the regular book budget, and cut aid to area resource and reference libraries among some of the line items cut.
It is most important to promote libraries for all the reasons they exist and not only for places to go when people can no longer afford books. If we don’t do that, we will have lost a golden opportunity to make long-lasting relationships with those people who pay taxes, support library budgets, vote for municipal officials, and tell friends and neighbors who helped them out when the need arose. We’ve never been just about the books and now is our time to say so.
