I feel lucky to live in such a library-rich neighborhood.  My family uses all four (four!) of our neighborhood branches.  Usually we make one library run a week to switch out multiple bags of books.  Sure, we often have a small tab for late books, or more rarely a larger one for a book that was hiding in our personal collection, or behind a large piece of furniture.  I never got upset about those fines, because they were the classic definition of a small price to pay for the thousands (thousands!) of books we’ve borrowed.

The number of library branches in town verges on superabundant, and the services at them are enviable.  Reserve a book online and have it delivered to the branch of your choice?  No problem.  Check out a book at one branch and return it at another?  Yes, you can.  Find multiple copies of new releases on their own shelf?  Right over there, Ma’am.  But our gleaming library system just got covered by a dark cloud.

Everyone knows that the city of L.A. is awash in red ink.  Part of the Mayor and City Council’s plan to cover the $212 million shortfall (please don’t quote me on that; the number seems to go up every day) includes plans to cut library services, branches, and materials. Library staff could be cut by 20% by June.  Branch libraries are already closed on Sundays and Friday mornings, but hours could be further reduced.

The vision of our beautiful new libraries standing there ill-staffed or closed is reminiscent of LAUSD, which now has a bunch of beautiful new schools, and not enough money to put teachers inside of them.  Parents are the obvious big stakeholders for schools, but the libraries serve our entire community in an immediate way, even more so now that so many people are unemployed.  The budget has to be balanced somehow, and it’s difficult to argue that libraries deserve full funding more than parks, or transportation services, or the fire department.  Any way you slice it, someone loses out on some essential service, and someone loses his or her job.  But restricting access and staff at facilities that are already bought and paid for seems like a particularly bad way to save money, because it wastes what is a valuable resource for everyone.

For more information, you can visit www.savethelibrary.org.

This entry was posted on March 18th, 2010 and is filed under Mother Tongue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.

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