via Universal Hub —
Users of branch libraries rose to support their branches - and to object to being forced to fight against other residents.
Don Haber, co-chairman of Friends of the Jamaica Plain Library, said his group has collected 1,500 signatures on petitions to keep the branch open. He said it is unfair his branch is “very likely on the chopping block” because the city refused repeated requests to make the branch handicap-accessible.
“Boston is still a city of turfs,” Sarah-Ann Shaw, president of Friends of the Dudley Branch Library, said. “If you decided to close certain branches and leave others open, it will be a mess in this city.”
One resident after another rose to declare branches joyous learning centers for little kids, safe havens for teens, community gathering places for adults. Many declared books are far from dead and joined trustee John Carroll in calling them more important now than ever. Elizabeth Buckley, a patron of the Faneuil branch in Oak Square, declared her branch “the cultural and intellectual center of the community.” Charles Levin declared “It is outrageous it has come to this. In times of economic crisis, libraries are needed most.”
BPL President Amy Ryan said the current crisis provides an opportunity to refashion the BPL system for the digital generation. She said the system needs to do a better job putting resources where the demands are. And increasingly, she said, that means online. “Libraries have never been more important or useful than they are today. Now we are information navigators, helping sort through millions of hits from the Internet.”
Ryan said that if bpl.org were a branch, it would be the sixth largest in the city. “We can’t take a car designed in the 1970s onto today’s information superhighway,” she said.
But Carroll said he was deeply disturbed to hear the BPL has already cut its budget for acquiring books, CDs and DVDs. One of the BPL’s most historic and fundamental roles is to ensure patrons can have access to any imnportant book in the English language. “Books matter to the library more now than ever,” he said.
