2003-05-08 12:06 a.m.
Rooting for the Oakland Readers
Arrrrgh. Why is it that I find out about these things via weblogs and not my local paper or my neighborhood association?
Emmielouhoo wrote about Pamie's plea on behalf of the Oakland Public Library. The city budget is being slashed, and as part of this, the library's acquisitions budget has been cut. Several branch libraries narrowly escaped closure earlier this year, but they're now facing reduced hours.
When you look at what else is on the chopping block (police budgets at a time when the murder rate is going way up; a fire station that was supposed to supply downtown with water in the next earthquake) it's understandable that they couldn't not cut the library budget. But still, it's not a good thing. Did you know that some of the schools in the poorer neighborhoods don't even have their own school libraries, relying on underfunded branch libraries for their students? And that even before this latest round of cuts, Oakland's library materials budget was already among the lowest in the country?
If you are thinking about donating, check out this wishlist. Montclair and Piedmont need books, but not as much as Fruitvale and West Oakland do. I've got a couple of gently used bestsellers and a recent health encyclopedia I'll be taking down to the library tomorrow, and I'll probably hit Cody's this weekend to see if I can't find a couple of Spanish translations of the Lemony Snicket books. (I checked the library's catalog online and while they have all of them in English, they only have the first two in Spanish. Language should not be a barrier to accessing the twisted genius that is A Series of Unfortunate Events.)
This is the first and probably the last time you'll hear this out of me in a non-ironic way -- do it for the children, folks.