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EDITORIAL: Checking out on libraries

In Penticton, our library had to cut Sunday from their schedule in order to be able to continue operating under their budget.

Library users in Newfoundland and Labrador got a shock last week, with news that severe budget cuts were forcing the closure of 54 —more than half — of the province’s libraries.

Toronto followed that same path a couple of years ago, and the idea has been broached in B.C. communities as well. In Penticton, our library had to cut Sunday from their schedule in order to be able to continue operating under their budget.

There are many politicians and others — sadly — that applaud these cuts, under the mistaken impression that the role of the public library is shrinking in these days of the Internet, electronic books, and other technologies that are making information ever more accessible. They couldn’t be more wrong.  Libraries have long been associated with just checking out books, though their real role has always been more than that. If you want proof, just ask any student who has had a librarian has helped find a key piece of information or directed them to the research they need to get that “A” on their report, term paper, masters’ thesis or doctoral dissertation.

Then too, there are things like storytime for children, introducing them to the pleasures of reading and gaining knowledge. Or special collections — local newspapers, historical information, family history resources and many others. A museum may share that duty, but then, it’s not for nothing that the Penticton Museum and Archives is housed in the same complex as our library.

Libraries are really about access to knowledge — even fiction is a form of knowledge, as well as entertainment..In our knowledge-based economy, you can’t argue about the value of access to information. As the conversation turns to making access to the Internet and information a basic human right, we should be enhancing the role of libraries in our communities, not trying to do away with them.

If governments want to talks about costs, better they get involved in the ongoing controversy of publishers charging libraries exorbitant prices for electronic copies of books.