A coworker turned me on to an article by Dan Akst in the most recent Carnegie Reporter. The article is entitled “Do Libraries Still Matter?”, and one would hope that the answer to the question is still ‘yes!” although one can also see the questioners point of view. It’s definitely worth looking at, and not just because the author gets heavily into Andrew Carnegie’s contribution to American library development. There’s a rule of thumb for you: capitalists like libraries and everything (well, many things) they represent, totalitarians do not. The next time you hear a politician talking about reducing funds for libraries or limiting how they may be used and by whom, remember that little rule and much becomes clearer.
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