Florida would have liked the dark ages...
I know, right. Three posts in one day. You guys ought to stick your heads out the door and see if there are four butt ugly horsemen coming down your street. (Unless it's the ones from Highlander. Methos was my kind of guy!)
Anyway, Florida is cutting out unnecessary funding to unimportant things like, oh, LIBRARIES! Uncool dudes. Cut and pasted the next part entirely from fatfred's journal with permission:
ALL STATE FUNDING FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES IS ELIMINATED
Florida Library Association asks Floridians to voice their opposition
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (MAY 1, 2009) - On April 30, an appropriations conference committee for the House and Senate agreed to eliminate all funding for Florida’s State Aid to Public Libraries program. This devastating action will result in some Florida library branches closing and will seriously cripple libraries’ ability to serve Floridians. It will be especially damaging to libraries in Florida’s rural communities, as these libraries rely heavily on provisions in the program that help communities with lower tax bases.
The Florida Library Association (FLA) is calling on Governor Charlie Crist to use his influence and ask legislative leaders to find a way to fund this critical program, which has helped support public library service to Floridians since 1962.
FLA also calls on Floridians to contact their local representatives to ask them to fund Florida’s State Aid to Public Libraries program so that libraries do not have to close branches around the state. Use the “Find Your Legislators” box at www.flsenate.gov to find your local representatives and their contact information.
In these rough economic times, Floridians need their libraries more than ever. Libraries help citizens with job searches, in obtaining e-Government services, and in teaching our young children to read. They also help parents and caregivers learn to be their child’s first teacher, and provide books, other print materials, DVDs and CDs.
Visit www.flalib.org or call 386-438-5795 for more information.
Taking away more stuff from those who have so little already. I know that budgets need to be examined and cut during the economic hard times we're going through, but just once I'd like to be the one to look over these budgets and decide what's necessary and what's not! I suspect I'd have a very different idea of where the fat trimming needs to come from.
What bugs me, what really bugs me, is the fact that when we make knowledge unavailable to those without means to purchase it, we are forcing our society to become one of haves and have nots, and gradually removing all hope of the have nots ever attaining upward social mobility.
If you feel strongly about this issue, feel free to gank my words or link to them from your own journals. Make your own post about this issue. Talk about it, discuss it, examine it. Make sure that if your state is ever in this position, people know what they're losing. If you live in Florida, speak out and make those phone calls, send your emails and letters.
Here are the words of folks more eloquent than myself:
What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.
~Archibald MacLeish, "The Premise of Meaning," American Scholar, 5 June 1972~
Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.
~Library at Thebes, inscription over the door~
The best of my education has come from the public library... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don't need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library.
~Lesley Conger~
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams~
Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.
~Lady Bird Johnson~
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
~Andrew Carnegie~
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
~Carl Sagan, Cosmos~
Rage, rage my friends. Do not allow this insult to the free exchange of knowledge to go unchallenged.
Anyway, Florida is cutting out unnecessary funding to unimportant things like, oh, LIBRARIES! Uncool dudes. Cut and pasted the next part entirely from fatfred's journal with permission:
ALL STATE FUNDING FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES IS ELIMINATED
Florida Library Association asks Floridians to voice their opposition
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (MAY 1, 2009) - On April 30, an appropriations conference committee for the House and Senate agreed to eliminate all funding for Florida’s State Aid to Public Libraries program. This devastating action will result in some Florida library branches closing and will seriously cripple libraries’ ability to serve Floridians. It will be especially damaging to libraries in Florida’s rural communities, as these libraries rely heavily on provisions in the program that help communities with lower tax bases.
The Florida Library Association (FLA) is calling on Governor Charlie Crist to use his influence and ask legislative leaders to find a way to fund this critical program, which has helped support public library service to Floridians since 1962.
FLA also calls on Floridians to contact their local representatives to ask them to fund Florida’s State Aid to Public Libraries program so that libraries do not have to close branches around the state. Use the “Find Your Legislators” box at www.flsenate.gov to find your local representatives and their contact information.
In these rough economic times, Floridians need their libraries more than ever. Libraries help citizens with job searches, in obtaining e-Government services, and in teaching our young children to read. They also help parents and caregivers learn to be their child’s first teacher, and provide books, other print materials, DVDs and CDs.
Visit www.flalib.org or call 386-438-5795 for more information.
Taking away more stuff from those who have so little already. I know that budgets need to be examined and cut during the economic hard times we're going through, but just once I'd like to be the one to look over these budgets and decide what's necessary and what's not! I suspect I'd have a very different idea of where the fat trimming needs to come from.
What bugs me, what really bugs me, is the fact that when we make knowledge unavailable to those without means to purchase it, we are forcing our society to become one of haves and have nots, and gradually removing all hope of the have nots ever attaining upward social mobility.
If you feel strongly about this issue, feel free to gank my words or link to them from your own journals. Make your own post about this issue. Talk about it, discuss it, examine it. Make sure that if your state is ever in this position, people know what they're losing. If you live in Florida, speak out and make those phone calls, send your emails and letters.
Here are the words of folks more eloquent than myself:
What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.
~Archibald MacLeish, "The Premise of Meaning," American Scholar, 5 June 1972~
Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.
~Library at Thebes, inscription over the door~
The best of my education has come from the public library... my tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book. You don't need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library.
~Lesley Conger~
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams~
Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.
~Lady Bird Johnson~
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
~Andrew Carnegie~
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
~Carl Sagan, Cosmos~
Rage, rage my friends. Do not allow this insult to the free exchange of knowledge to go unchallenged.