Libraries should be thought of as an essential service

By Letter to the Editor on September 25, 2019.

If I understand it correctly, the new UCP government’s coming budget will include, among many other targets for serious cutbacks, the library systems.

I believe libraries are very much an “essential” service, like fire departments, police services, hospital emergency services and some other services that should and are felt to be very essential. I cannot understand why some of those services, like police and fire fighting services, could ever even contemplate strike action, like happens sometimes in other jurisdictions. Neither can I understand why any government, no matter by what party, would even consider cutting their funding back.

Checking for any trim-able “fat” that is present in any service or organization that has existed for some time is one thing. I feel the accumulation of such “fat” is a natural occurrence and it is the responsibility of those service’s auditors or overseers to spot it and have it trimmed, on their own. Only when a public service shows obvious signs of stagnation, accumulating all kinds of no longer needed functions – like happens often not only in public services but also in private businesses – should any government or shareholder group get involved.

Why would I consider libraries as absolutely essential services, one might be inclined to ask. Well, all I can do to answer that is ask this question: Can you imagine any community, of any size, not having access to the many services libraries offer (if funded adequately), even if some distance away or only accessible via online?

I can imagine it.

In authoritarian countries libraries are used for furthering their own political agendas. I should know, having grown up first in a fascist system, followed by a communist system. However, in any free and democratic country, libraries are there to not only entertain, but to inform, educate, keep minds and brains alive and developing further, free minds, keep “oldtimer’s disease” at bay, provide choices, provide stimulation and information, to excite, to offer learning and exploration, to keep a community’s members engaged and interested, to provide restful settings for quiet contemplation, to search and find, to offer a professional librarian’s take on things, to perhaps also give a warm, or cool, place to just rest for a while, to find non-fiction about any subject, beautiful novels, music, DVDs, CDs… My gosh, I could go on and on.

In short, our library system and many others across this vast country of ours I feel definitely, help to keep hospitals, mental institutions, social services, jails, even police services, juvenile courts, and parents from being totally swamped. In other words, a very much essential service.

I am very much aware that what I have had to say here isn’t going to sway any conservative budgetters’ pre-set made-up mind, unfortunately. Too bad!