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By David Rothman

image Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who should know better, proposes a five percent cut in library financing for the city—with, says a New York Times writer, three percent further slashes “on the table.”

Nice going, Michael. Aren’t you the same self-made billionaire who in ’04 was talking up the benefits of school libraries, at the very least? Remember the headline? “City to to Restore 25 libraries in schools by Fall 2006.” Now school kids will be among the New Yorkers paying for the mistakes of politicians and Wall Street Geckos that have reduced tax revenue.

So will the NYLP’s e-book and audiobook collection—which is open to out-of-towners who pay $100 fees for cards—suffer? And is it possible that wider use of E could help stretch library dollars?

Good case for P services, too

Regardless, the Times’ Susan Dominus makes a good case for not cutting back on paper books and other services, either, and avoiding shuts in library hours.

“For many middle-class New Yorkers,” she writes, “these kinds of pleasures are a big part of what the boom years have brought them: not second homes or personal Pilates instructors or Kelly bags, but urban utopian luxuries like fanciful playgrounds, open-air free movies and library services good enough to make them weekend highlights. All of those services, financed by tax dollars, have the added benefit of throwing people together, and none more effectively than libraries — free, local, with room to roam, they’re like parks with a brain, providing education brilliantly disguised as leisure, ideally on the weekends, when most people have time for it.”

Related: New York state’s new plans to tax etailers’ books. Talk about salt and wounds. Granted, NYC and the state are different. But imagine the message being sent here? Is New York aiming to be Mississippi?

More rants on the way, promise: Ok, Mike Cane. You reminded me of this. Your turn.

 
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