[updated post: We won!] Please Help Save the Los Angeles Public Library
Dear friends,
I am part of a grassroots collective of passionate library users who are deeply disturbed by the proposed $1-per-book inter-branch loan fee that will be charged beginning July 1st.
We have launched a website at http://www.saveLAPL.org to raise awareness of this issue and the fact that there is a virtual moratorium on the library buying new books and periodicals.
We believe that if the people who use the Library make their feelings known to the Mayor, Library Commissioners and City Librarian that an alternate solution will be found, one which will generate more money for the Library without putting the burden for fundraising on the people who can least afford it.
Please visit http://www.saveLAPL.org and let the Mayor know what you think, view the documents, read the testimonials and tell your friends to help Save LAPL.
best regards,
Kim Cooper
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About Kim
Kim Cooper is the author of the bestselling 33 1/3 series volume Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea', and co-editor of the anthologies Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth and Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You...
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Dear Kim . . .
. . . our library in Pacific Grove, California is suffering severe cutbacks, I know Vallejo, also California, is having its problems, and now this in Los Angeles. It makes you wonder what is going on. Everyone knows our education system is going through bad times, now libraries. Bad for adults, terrible for kids. I decided to research some quotes on libraries and came up with these among many:
``What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?'' _ John Ruskin.
``A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life'' _ Henry War Beecher.
``The refelctions and history of men and women throughout the world are contained in books. America's greatness is not only recorded in books, but it is also dependent upon each and every citizen being able to utilize public libraries'' _ Terence Cooke.
``A great library contains the diary of the human race'' _ Gerald Mercer Daniel.
Then, the saddest I think, this remark made by Horace Mann: ``A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up children without surrounding them with books . . . Children learn to read being in the presence of books.''
Kids have that right. We can't put books in their houses. But we can have places where they can read and borrow books. But we're failing them in that area now, too. Is Los Angeles going to charge kids a buck for a book?
Tax on T.V.s
We should tax the purchase of new TVs and put the money into the libraries. The British fund their cultural programs this way.
http://www.redroom.com/blog/belle-yang/sexiest-man-alive
That's a good idea . . .
. . . they must sell tens of thousands of televisions in Los Angeles each year. Something ironically poetic, too, about a medium that often discourages reading helping to purchase books. In Britain, is it a one time fee or an annual tax on televisions?
Save Our Libraries
Come on Los Angeles! We hope you win your fight to save your library as an important, functioning institution, because if you win, we will all win. Hundreds of California libraries are facing huge budget cuts, and every day the economic forecast sounds more like a bad weather report: "More dark clouds on the way". Let's keep the clouds at bay. Let's keep our libraries.
Come on Los Angeles, you're the biggest city on the West Coast. We will be watching.
We won!
after 875 emails, seven days and we hope at least one sleepless night for our belt-tightening Mayor, the SaveLAPL campaign has won in its efforts to stop the LA Public Library from charging patrons $1 to borrow books from other branches! If you sent an email or told your friends, thanks!
But the Library still faces hard times as the new budget is finalized, and we will keep you posted.
Read more at http://www.savelapl.org