Community Essay: A Library Says, ‘We Believe in Your Potential’ : Police and firefighters exist because things go wrong; libraries encourage betterment, but are about to die under the budget knife.

We librarians are reluctantly closing branches, slashing book orders, canceling hundreds of magazine and newspaper subscriptions and preparing to lay off hundreds of employees. Your library is being diminished to the point that it is in danger of becoming irrelevant to the community it strives to serve.

I am a librarian with the County of Los Angeles Public Library. I helped close two libraries last fall, posted signs begging the public to buy books for us, canceled subscriptions to magazines that our patrons needed and enjoyed and nervously eyed my place on the layoff list. Almost everywhere in California, the story is similar. No one seems able to argue the libraries’ case, not when they’re up against public safety or social services.

Most government services are based on the principle that things will always go wrong: crimes happen and so we need a police force; fires occur and so we have a fire department; people get sick and so we need hospitals.

The library is that rare sanguine institution within a generally pessimistic system. It is eternally hopeful. The existence of a library is society’s way of saying to the individual, “We believe in your potential. You are important to us. We’ve provided this resource because we know that we’ll be paid back many times for our investment in you.”

Libraries are also a bargain. Our department’s current budget is about $64 million, a little more than one-half of 1% of the total L.A. County budget of $11 billion. For every $100 of county spending, libraries get 60 cents. At this level we were able to build a library system that circulated millions more items than any other library in the United States, registered 1.3 million new borrowers in the last three years and was visited by more than 12 million people last year. County libraries sponsor summer reading programs for thousands of children and are home to the renowned Ethnic Resource Centers; they provide literacy and English-as-a-Second-Language education and referrals for all of Southern California. There are 85 branches spread over 4,000 square miles of L.A. County, down from 93 branches. Under the most recent budget scenario, more than half of the remaining branches could be shuttered.

We would also slash the hours at branches that remain open, lay off 800 employees, cancel all subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and buy no new books. All of this would save the county about $30 million. The impact of these cuts on the library budget would absolutely devastate the institution and at the same time do very little to help the projected deficit the county government faces this fiscal year. A budget is a statement of priorities, and right now your library is at the bottom of the list. Where will the small entrepreneur go to research new business opportunities? How will people gain access to the information they need to improve their lives?

School libraries are in even worse shape than public libraries in this state. Their budgets have been cut so severely that in many communities the public library has become the de facto school library. If that library closes, where do the students go? Five, 10 miles to the nearest open library? Last year a student, asked about Norwalk Library having to drop subscriptions to dozens of magazines, said, “Everyone tells us to achieve but they won’t give us any tools.”

I recently helped a patron find information about starting a new business. Pick up any book about starting businesses and one of the first things you’ll read is a recommendation to visit the library to research the business you plan on getting into. Research who the competition is, the market you will be serving, prospective suppliers and where to get financing. Isn’t entrepreneurship something we want to encourage in Southern California right now?

We cannot expect smart children or a thriving economy unless we provide people with an environment that at least gives them a chance of success. The maintenance of public safety is important to this success, but we make a grave error if we think that library service is not vital to the health of our community.

What sort of message do we send when a great institution like this is so crippled by budget cuts that it ceases to be a relevant part of its community? “We don’t care. You have no potential. All your efforts are futile.” If this is the case then we’d better get ready to hire a lot more deputies and build a lot more jails, as we will have created the society we deserve, one that believes its citizens can do nothing but fail.