by Alison Janssen
OH MY GOD FOX NEWS ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!*
You guys, this is probably going to be a completely reactionary post, so consider yourself warned.
So I just watched this video (via Galleycat) and got Hulk-smash-type angry.
Listen, I don't pretend to be an expert (or even a dabbler) in economics. And budgets? Ha! When I was growing up, my mom had my sisters and me keep a series of labeled jars and coffee cans into which we had to split up our allowance money. Something like 20% for Long Term Savings, 30% for Short Term Savings, 40% for Living Expenses, and 10% for Offerings. I think that's right, but I feel like I forgot one of the jars. Anyway, we got paid as many dollars as we were years old, and then we had this clickety-clackety old Mickey-Mouse-wearing-a-graduation-cap calculator to figure out how much money went into each jar. It was a painstaking process, and one that involved my stepdad having a huge supply of change for us, since we couldn't just get fourteen dollar bills and be done with it. We kept the jars in the upstairs room that used to be an office but got turned into my little sister Rachel's room, on a shelf with the change buckets and the calculator. I will say, the Offerings jar was a cool idea and I still remember deciding which charity to donate to which month, and I'm happy and proud that my mom taught us to give like that. But the budgeting lesson? Lost, when we discovered that my sister Rachel had been dipping in and out of everyone's jars for her own purposes.
So OBVIOUSLY I can be forgiven for not being good at budgets and savings. OBVIOUSLY, RACHEL.
But FOX News, you guys are a bunch of weenies for airing that story. The answer to the Illinois state (or any state's) budget crisis is not to single out a service/program/what-have-you, scare up a bunch of percentages of how much it costs to keep that service/program/what-have-you running, and then camp out with a secret camera to see if people are using that much money's worth of service/program/what-have-you!
And really, FOX News, you're going to say that since the majority of the people you observed spied on in the library were using the internet, then ... well I'm not clear what you conclusion is here. It somehow turns into "Are LI-braries NECESSARY!?" but what I think you're implying is "Are BOOKS almost EXTINCT?! Does ANYONE even READ anymore?!"
Yes, FOX News. I do. And so do all of my friends.
And sometimes we get our books at the library.
Other times, we go to the library to look things up on the internet.
I get that there are limited resources and lots of jars to fill. I get that there's not enough to go around. But I take huge, massive, awesome-in-its-enormity issue with the suggestion that it might be a solution to cut funding to public libraries.
I'm bolding this next part because I'm afraid if I put it in all-caps it'll be hard to read, but know that it feels all-caps in my heart:
Education is vitally important. Schools need funding. But education doesn't -- shouldn't -- stop when you graduate. Education is a lifelong pursuit, and we as a nation have a responsibility to ensure that our populous has access to free information, no matter the age (or income or etc, etc, etc) of the individual.
Nowhere but at a public library can a person walk in off the street, consult a card catalog or librarian, and begin to learn about any topic of their choosing. Public libraries are amazing, vast, sacred places. Hands OFF.
And stop f*#@ing hiding in libraries with spy cameras! It is not up to you, or to ANYONE, to judge how an individual uses the resources available at a public library. If I want to look up ancient looming methods, as (apparently) useless as that information may be, it is up to me to decide to learn it.
We trust our librarians to curate helpful, enriching, culturally significant, entertaining, varied collections, and they're also there to aid us in searches that go beyond the books on library grounds. It's a vital public service, and I can't stand anyone suggesting otherwise.
* Well Fox News, I was hurting for a blog post topic, so, I guess, thanks for that? Weenies.
