#SaveTheLibrary Words from Scott Douglas in His "Dispatches from A Public Librarian"

Library don't earn money for a city, but ther do earn a city pride; they enrich lives; and most importantly, they help people to get the skills they need to reenter the work force. In hard times, they shouldn't have limited service hours -they should have expanded services hours. When a person goes to a library to get help seeking employment, and they see a notice on the door that says that due to cutbacks the library is not open, it only adds to the persons frustation that there is no hope or places to go for the help that they need.
I`ll stop the gloom here. At the very least, I hope you consider that your 20 cent fine may actually be helping provide better service, instead of demanding to see a supervisor because you feel it`s unfair. Actually, how about uou don't complain to anyone at the library -if you don't like the libraries service, then please complain to some public official that matters and ask them (beg them) to give libraries more funding, so they won't be the latest in a long list of libraries that just aren't making it, and have to cut back hours and close branches to stay afloat.
Spread the word. If you approve this dispatch (or even if you hat it, but you like libraries) then start a Twitter trend -just tweet #savethelibrary.
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Closing a public library would mean thousands of displaced homeless people with no place to brush their teeth, milllions of parents with no place to send their kids after school while they work, and worst of all, thousands and thousands of bitter unemployed librarians cluttering up social service offices with their sad tales of how they use to get paid to do nothing.
Libraries, as useless as they are, cannot be turned into franchised retail venues, but that doesn't mean millions of city dollars must be spent to keep open buildings that, in an illiterate world, are useless.