The Research Says it All!

Have you seen this article in the Boston Globe? Cuts put Towns' Libraries at Risk? It's enough to make you cry! Where's our boy Andrew Carnegie when we need a funding angel? Though, cynical me, I doubt Andy C. would've been so generous if he'd had the federal income tax man breathing down his neck. And taxes are at the center of why libraries all over MA are in dire straits. I eagerly read this sad article looking for a mention of Belmont's predicament, but surprisingly, Belmont with all it's budget woes and library blues, doesn't rise to the level of selling off the collection to keep the doors open!

So, I'm scratching my head, how did it come to be that all these towns all over MA can't afford to provide services--not just libraries but schools, police, emergency--to their citizens! Seems to me the system is broken, badly, seriously, irreparably broke (as my sweet Aunt Mabel would say in her coastal North Carolina twang). It also seems to me, things are so broken that the entire Commonwealth of MA with all those big fat brain boxes sitting in the State House and in all those hundreds of colleges and Universities around us appear unable to come up with some workable, creative solutions.

Maybe all of us (and here I mean our Board of Selectmen and the gentle folk at Town Hall) should read this article and the report about how libraries make cities stronger! The Urban Institute gets it! "This study finds that the return on investment in public libraries not only benefits individuals, but also strengthens community capacity to address urgent issues related to economic development." More than this, the report goes on to say "there is a growing body of literature that notes a shift in the role of public libraries from passive recreational reading and research institutions to active economic development agents!" So, after you finish the NY Times Cross Word Puzzle today, read this report...and you'll see how this study concludes that "public libraries are positioned to fuel not only new, but next economies because of their roles in building technology skills, entrepreneurial activity, and vibrant, livable places. Their combination of stronger roles in economic development strategies and their prevalence--16,000 branches in more than 9,000 systems--make public libraries stable and powerful tools for cities seeking to build strong and resilient economies."