Why Libraries?

With so many budget cuts in communities and public schools, often funding for libraries is being cut. In the Charlotte area principals were told that they had to choose between a counselor, a academic facilitator or a librarian position for the 2011-2012 school year, they could not have all three. Consequently many librarians are losing their positions for next year. As I keep reading articles (online and otherwise) about this topic of cuts to library and library staff funding, it seems like every time someone makes a comment along the lines of: "I don't use the public library, so why should my tax dollars pay for it?" Which relates back to the question of why are public libraries important?

I wanted to spend a little while trying to answer this question, but I felt that it was too important for me to wait and potentially forget about. Because no matter whether or not I ever actually get to work in a public library (which I would love to do), I still believe that they are vital and important to strong and healthy communities.

Reason 1 Why Libraries are Vital: They provide learning and self-help opportunities.
Libraries provide access to vast amount of information that can provide individuals with learning and self-help opportunities that they may not be able to get else where. You may say that the Internet can do the same thing, which is partially true that the Internet can provide vast amounts of information however there are three things that the Internet can't do.
One, is provide you with only verified information. Part of a librarian's job to selectively choose the resources that are made available in the library. Librarians are called to provide diverse view points of resources on issues, but also to make sure that those resources are of high quality for their purpose. Google can't guarantee that its results are good results, only that its results seem to have the key words that you entered into the search bar.
Two, there are still many people who cannot afford to have the Internet at home, therefore they must go somewhere with computers to access all of that information on the Internet. Where do people go to find free access to computers? The library.
Finally, there is still a lot of information not on the "free" Internet. If you use a Google search there is still a lot of very good and useful information that you will not be able to find. Some of that information is still only found in books. Not all books have been digitalized and even if they have been digitalized not all of those ebooks are available in a simple Google search. Often they are proprietary (not free) information that is located behind a pay wall. Furthermore there are many databases which libraries subscribe to, which are also proprietary in nature. Databases often contain articles or reports which are very useful and often some of the most recent and highest quality resources available on a certain topic. Databases usually can only be accessed through someone who has already paid for access, such as the library. Furthermore, don't even get me started on the deep web, the vast amount of information that is stored on the Internet, but will never come up on a Google search because it is not indexed by Google. Part of what librarians are trained to do is to find information of all types and sizes on all sorts of different topics. Some great information on some topics can be found in the deep web and some librarians (such as myself) are trained to help you find it there.
Now that my lengthy explanation that not all information can be found on the Internet is over, hopefully I have shown that libraries are essential to providing those learning and self-help environments and resources that people need. Libraries are free, try within reason to have reasonable hours, provide useful resources on many many different topics and also provide helpful staff, trained to assist patrons in how to find the information they need. With out these free places for people to learn, how could they improve their lot in life? How much more would their quality of life suffer without having access to this information that could help them: find a job, start a business, research a medical condition, or whatever other issues they needed to investigate?

I hope to provide more reasons in the future as to why libraries are important, but it feels good to at least get one out in public.