Librarians are (social) heroes; stepping up when other social services have fallen away, to help those with few other places to go...
No wonder the Right wants to defund the libraries (via attrition against local authorities), when you look at the pragmatic but vital social support they are offering to the vulnerable & isolated.
@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon it’s also because an educated electorate is selective in voting and the better educated the electorate the less chance of electing a right wing populist.
Last year on Mastodon we featured this story from the BBC about Gladstone's Library, the U.K.'s only residential library. Fediverse folk were so enthusiastic that when we discovered the library is offering scholarships to be taken in 2025, we had to share the information (see the second link in this post for all the details).
@CultureDesk@bookstodon It is worth warning folks who are thinking of visiting that it is full of the raceism (both casual and overt) of the time. Think carefully who you take there and go with that in mind.
If anybody would like to archive their UK general election 2024 campaigning leaflets, I can send you a stamp addressed envelope to post them to the library here .
My heart aches for the children who will no longer have access to their local library because some arrogant assholes decided to be offended by books with new ideas and different perspectives.
Today in Labor History May 15, 1917: The Library Employees’ Union was founded in New York City. It was the first union of public library workers in the United States. One of their main goals was to elevate the low status of women library workers and their miserable salaries. Maud Malone (1873-1951) was a founding member of the union. She was also a militant suffragist and an infamous heckler at presidential campaign speeches.
"The pile beside my bed never shrinks; at the bottom of the stack are books I've been planning to crack open for months. My shelves remain full of lingering aspirations," writes the Walrus's Michelle Cyca. She looks at the problem of unread books, and the difficulty in offloading our libraries. What do you do with your unwanted books?
@CultureDesk@bookstodon New hardbacks that I know I won’t read again I put on eBay. Other ones I give to friends or donate to a local book stall that sells them for charity. I have a cull once a year or so.
@CultureDesk@bookstodon I selected “I have an e-reader so I don’t buy books”, but that’s only half the story. All novels I buy are ebook, but there’s 20 years of collecting paper books before I got a kindle, plus a I still buy paper graphic novels and art books.
Public libraries must remain public cultura infrastructure if they're to fulfill their mission at all, let alone survive.
Worth noting how little it costs to keep them functioning compared to what cities everywhere pay cops--who, lest we forget, have no constitutional obligation to save, serve, or protect the public; to know the laws they're "applying", or not to commit crimes themselves.
Via @tuphlos, I just found out that Oklahoma's Supreme Court blocked the right wing state from banning books from public schools and penalizing schools who refused to comply with the fascists.