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A city without libraries; funding is key need

The Sept. 5, 2022, edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer detailed the state of the Philadelphia Library System. According to the article’s author Anna Orso, “with the city staring down a massive budget hole two years ago, it slashed the library’s funding and laid off more than 200 people. The director resigned amid a staff revolt and complaints of racial discrimination. People quit in droves and hiring was frozen. Skeleton crews reopened branches without enough help.”

Today, the library system is still short several hundred library staff. Many of their library branches are only open four hours a day. Over this past summer, none were open on the weekends. The branches are crucial to public safety. In neighborhoods experiencing high rates of gun violence or drug overdose rates, libraries are a safe haven. For many people, they can be the only place to sit in air conditioning.

The lack of librarians and access to libraries ripples out to the education our youth receive. Orso states that “city libraries play a critical role in Philadelphia, especially for public school students, as the School District of Philadelphia has one of the worst librarian-to-student ratios in the country. Just four of its 216 schools have libraries with certified school librarians, according to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.”

After the 2008 recession and 2020 pandemic budget cuts, funding has begun to trickle back into the library system. But rebuilding a library system takes time. Hiring for management level positions, including orientation and onboarding, can take six months. If that position was filled internally, another position must then be filled. Bottom line: even money can’t fix all problems right away.

What is the moral of this story? Libraries are essential to the stability and growth of a community. Residents of all ages benefit from libraries and their services and programs. For many libraries, the large majority of their funding comes from federal and state government.

Book of the week

NYPD Red by James Patterson & Marshall Karp

(Adult fiction, thriller, suspense, police procedural)

Detective Zach Jordan is all about Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect, the new motto of the NYPD. That’s handy when he and his new partner are dispatched to a posh hotel to investigate the death of a studio honcho in town for “Hollywood on the Hudson,” an event designed to steal movie business from Los Angeles.

Jordan’s new partner, and old girlfriend, is Kylie MacDonald, now married to a successful show-business producer. One dead film mogul is only the beginning. Next on the hit list is a skirt-chasing married actor dead from two fatal rounds from a prop gun supposedly loaded with blanks.

The Tinseltown movers and shakers who have descended on New York City have become targets for the Chameleon, a frustrated working stiff actor who spends his time among the scenery as an extra. But the Chameleon has a talent for makeup and special effects and a sociopath sycophant girlfriend to assist.

Via her producer husband, McDonald knows everyone who’s anyone, and she can don evening wear and mingle where cops aren’t readily visible. That means she’s on the red carpet when the Chameleon’s next victim, vodka-swilling bad boy Brad Schuck, is torched by a Molotov cocktail lobbed into his Hummer limo. With the publicity-conscious mayor leaning hard on Jordan’s boss, a clone of Lt. Van Buren on Law and Order, there are round-the-clock shifts at the 19th Precinct, leaving little time for Jordan to go one-on-one at Gerri’s Diner with his possible new flame, department shrink Cheryl Robinson.

First, he has to team up again with MacDonald to save her husband and second, foil the Chameleon’s plot to send a hundred Hollywood types to never-never land with big chunks of C-4.

Bottom line: This is an enjoyable story that is available in print as well as an eAudio book; I listened to it on my daily commute.

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Vince Giordano has been the librarian and director of the Juniata County Library since 2015.

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