Thanks so much to all who have commented!! I met my goal and will be donating $50.00 to the Burlington City Junior School library. Thank you, too, to everyone else involved in this challenge and, of course, Jennifer R. Hubbard for launching it. If libraries ever truly needed help, it is now. And it’s very sad how many have been affected.
Yesterday, my son and I went to story time at our local library. On our way out, I saw a flyer describing the many ways our library will suffer if funding is cut as planned. Internet? That will be gone. Ability to obtain books via other libraries in the network? Gone. Movie and music rentals? Greatly reduced. The list goes on. My family and I live in the suburbs–blue ribbon schools and all that–and I took our library for granted, just assumed libraries in more impoverished areas needed the help. I now signed up to get the word out to help our library as well.
As a kid, I would go here to do research for term papers. There was no internet then, no interlibrary loan program, nowhere near the multitude of resources currently available. Like many teens, I hoped for a book to not be there or a magazine to be out so I could get an extension on an assignment, but really what could I say? “Yes, Mrs. L, I swear there was no volume E of the encyclopedia. And the G was missing too. Someone must have had them out.”? It’s scary to think that students may not be able to surf the net to obtain research information or to go online and scan the numerous newspaper articles available.
I am really glad I did the Library Blog Challenge because it opened my eyes further as to what we must do, and this is just the beginning.