Mayor Nutter recently announced that eleven branch libraries will be closed, not temporary but permanently, due to the budget crisis. Thirty six branch library staff members will be laid off as will 25 staff members of the central library.
The library is taking, as a percentage of its budget, a larger reduction (of about 20%) than any other city agency.
I believe this reduction is a serious mistake and am working with the Friends of the Free Library to build opposition to these cutbacks.
Why are these library reductions so unconscionable?
1. Library branches are critical to education in Philadelphia. We live in a city in which elementary schools do not have libraries. Indeed, only one high school library, at Central, meets the states minimum requirements.
2. Library branches are one of the most important places our kids go after school. Our kids find not only books and magazines and computers at the library but also helpful librarians who aid them with homework and watch out for them.
3. The library is the primary institution in the city that helps overcome the digital divide. Families without internet access make use of the library on regular basis. Many adults and kids who own computers still have to use the library for internet access or to print their documents.
4. At a time when unemployment is rising significantly, library access is critical to those who are looking or applying for new jobs as many jobs applications are only taken on-line.
5. Libraries are critical to the civic life of our communities. They are important meeting places for community groups and associations.
6. Nothing is more important to later life success, by almost any definition of success, than literacy and a connection to the world of ideas and learning. Libraries are the main institution of government that connects people to that world.
While only eleven of fifty four branches are being closed now, this action harms the whole system. Other libraries will be more crowded. Because the last librarians hired are the first to be let go, many librarians will move or be moved to new libraries disrupting the relationships they have developed with adults and kids. The $1.t million reduction in the budget for collections (books, tapes, DVDs, periodicals, etc.) harms the whole system.
Moreover, if we allow these libraries to close, we set a dangerous precedent for other library closures. Plans are continuing to build a beautiful new addition to the central library. While private funds will pay for most of the costs of the expansion, where is the funding going to come for operating a new, expensive building? We can’t sacrifice the branch libraries in our neighborhoods.
Questions can also be raised about how these branches were chosen for closure. The official answer is that the branches being closed are those nearest other branches. But that criterion does not take into account how close a library branch is to the libraries of our colleges or whether it is in a neighborhood in which people are more or less likely to have access to books and computers. If you rank the libraries in order of the median income of the population they serve, you will see that none of the branches in the top quarter of the list are being closed.
Frankly, if our library were to close, my daughter would not be harmed much. She has her own computer, printer and internet access. She has an account on Amazon she can use to order books. She goes to a school with a very good library. And she has my well stocked library to browse.
Of all the ways in which my daughter’s life is privileged, her access to these tools of intellectual life is the most important. And it is the one which can be most easily compensated for by a great public library system.
Doing this is critical to us. Fifty percent of Philadelphians have no home computers; 25% live below the poverty level. These library closures target the poor.
We have been cutting taxes in recent years and the haves have benefited the most from them. Meanwhile the have-nots are the ones who will suffer from the reductions in the library.
We have the elements of a library system in Philadelphia that can to some extent overcome the divisions between haves and have nots. Shame on us if we allow it to be lost, even in part.