Libraries closing: Free Library of Philadelphia Library System

The Free Library of Philadelphia Library System is closing all branches and eliminating all library programs unless the state legislature approves funding.

Support your libraries! There is more to your local library than books (I’m talking to you naysayers who think no one visits the library because there are Kindles to be had).

Philadelphia Free Library System is shutting down via Boing
Boing by Cory Doctorow on 9/13/09

The Philadelphia Free Library system is broke, and they’re
shutting it down, including cancelling “all branch and regional
library programs, programs for children and teens, after school
programs, computer classes, and programs for adults” and “all
children programs, programs to support small businesses and job
seekers, computer classes and after school programs” and “all
library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and
other community centers” and “all community meetings” and “all
GED, ABE and ESL program.”

Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our
communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the
vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful
thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think
of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the
collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life
was forever changed for the better in those buildings.

Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar
that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of
the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during
the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but
refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they
guarded would become firewood.

Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years
of the  PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records.
Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is
universal access to all human knowledge.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest
country
in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are
withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to
spare one banker’s bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire
region’s connection with human culture and knowledge and
community.

Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.
All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central
Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009