Where Have You Gone, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

I'm a little bit worried about my country.  Not for me, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it.  I'll never have that Jaguar I wanted when I was a teen, I may not even ever own another brand new car, but I'll be all right.

I'm not even worried about the country sinking into not-so-super-power status.  Hey, it happened to the British and Roman empires, and the Brits and Italians seem happy enough.

I'm worried that we feel so entitled and, maybe because of that, so threatened.  We are angered that people might come here from Mexico and take our jobs.  Outraged that people of Moslem faith might build more Mosques than we have churches.  And words cannot express the fear we have, the conviction we have, that no matter how much we own, someone with less will end up with some of it.

Sick people without jobs might end up in the good hospitals with the better doctors because they have gotten better health insurance than us.

Children of the poor might go to the same or even better schools than our children.

They'll take our jobs, our religion, our education, our neighborhoods, our children's inheritance.

So we must build fences, pass laws, have more prisons, deport people.

And keep lowering taxes, so "they" won't be given more of what should belong to us.

What America is this?  The land of the insecure and home of the scared.

The 21st Century Library

Let's go local today, really local.  Suppose you had a county library, where the branch libraries had been expanding, so that it has both the benefits of a county library system, and each branch also truly serves the community.  Hard to believe around here, but it actually had happened.

Staff was paid well below the norm, especially in the non-reference positions, where in several of the branches the clerical staff was expected to take on reference duties with no increase of salary.  Pages were paid less than they would have gotten at a fast food job.  But most of the people who worked there LOVED libraries and that made it worth the financial sacrifice.

But that lovely library system suffered the financial catastrophe caused when the middle and lower class experience a serious economic downturn and the wealthy refuse to step up and contribute to the cost of government.  State and local governments, in the pocket of the wealthy, continue to cut funding of government services, and staff is drastically cut through an interminable hiring freeze.  The book budget is cut, some programs suffer, and library hours are trimmed.

Now we are Under New Management, and of course he has terrific credentials, and lots of wonderful ideas.  For example, instead of having a book budget of 60% adult and 30% children, we reverse it!  And we phase out material being "owned" by individual branches, so that items stay at whatever branch they get returned to, until they are requested at another branch, or returned to another branch, so that we have one big happy library system, and less so individual branches.

I know I don't like change much, so I ponder before I jump to conclusions.  Here are the questions I have:

If you drastically change the distribution of adult/children's material, does that mean you increase the amount of children's materials, or decrease the amount of adult materials?

If most of the items go to the busiest branches, and stay there, how does that impact the communities?

I am concerned about making these incredible plans, while there is inadequate funding to continue to do well what's been done in the past.

The other concern I have can be broadened to the state and national levels, as each community suffers unemployment, and community services suffer due to drastic cuts in staff, and more people are unemployed and pay less taxes to the community, state and federal government....

Step one is providing the services you used to have, with the staff you need and at a living wage.

Focus on the smaller communities instead of trying to do more by getting bigger.

If your New Improved Director is having community meetings, you may want to go and ask him some of these questions, and more.

Save your library by speaking up.  Libraries are NOT free.  And in November,  Vote for your Library.