If you didn't see this wonderful editorial in the Concord Monitor from this past Sunday August 12th, it's worth reading.
Editorial: Storm
proves the role of library in Hopkinton, all towns
·
Sunday, August 12,
2018
Last month, an
economics professor named Panos Mourdoukoutas wrote a column for Forbes in
which he argued that Amazon bookstores should replace local libraries. It
didn’t take long for Mourdoukoutas to learn that people really, really love
their libraries – and for practical rather than sentimental reasons.
Forbes has since
sheepishly removed the article, and Mourdoukoutas has become something of a
Twitter punching bag for his lame suggestion. And yet he still hasn’t changed
his tune. You see, Mourdoukoutas doesn’t like contributing his tax dollars to
something he doesn’t use, something he believes has been rendered obsolete by
Jeff Bezos’s behemoth. He would rather people hand over their money to Amazon
shareholders than subsidize a public library. Some people just don’t get it.
But a lot of people
do.
Earlier this month in
Hopkinton, a storm blew into town and a bolt of lightning hit the library’s
cupola. The ensuing fire caused extensive damage, and it will be months before
residents have full use of their beloved building and its contents. In the
meantime, the support the library has received from patrons and surrounding
communities has been heartwarming – but not surprising.
Jim O’Brien, chairman
of the Hopkinton select board, told the Monitor that “the
library is definitely the center of the community.” He’s right, of course, but
not just about Hopkinton. Whenever we have moved to a new town, the library is
one of the first places we go. Not just because we want to check out the
selection of new fiction, which we do, but because the better acquainted we
become with the library and the people who work and gather there, the more our
new town feels like home. A library is a place where young and old congregate
and interact, where lifelong friendships are discovered and nurtured, where
knowledge is gained and passed on. Best of all, a public library is one of the
few truly equitable places in a society of haves and have nots. No one
cardholder is above another; the library exists for all equally, regardless of
sex or economic status, age or race, political affiliation or level of
education.
If there was any doubt
how the people of Hopkinton feel about their library, the lightning strike on
Aug. 3 set the record straight. Even before the flames were fully extinguished,
townspeople wanted to know how they could help – and then they started helping.
Town and library
officials should be lauded, too, for how well they have kept people in the loop
through a news blog and Facebook page, with links for each on the library
website at hokintontownlibrary.org. We also applaud all of the area libraries
that have opened their doors to Hopkinton cardholders, including Concord,
Dunbarton, Henniker, New England College in Henniker, Hillsborough, Warner,
Weare and Webster. As we said, it’s heartwarming but not surprising. That’s the
way libraries, and librarians, roll.
But if some of you
remain sympathetic to Mourdoukoutas’s argument – that there’s no place for
publicly funded libraries in the age of Amazon – we suggest that you ask a few
young people how they feel. You might be surprised by their answers. A Pew Research
Center study from 2016 found that 53 percent of millennials had used a public
library or bookmobile in the previous year, which is more than generation X (45
percent), baby boomers (43 percent) or the silent generation (36 percent).
Times change and society
progresses, but libraries are just as important now as they have ever been. But
most of you already knew that.
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