Guest Column: Wisdom, shortchanged

You can ask your local librarian where to find your favorite book, how to learn to speak Italian or even for help on your job application. But the one thing your librarian can't tell you is what it's like to be a librarian in Philadelphia.

At least not if you're a reporter. This city's librarians are barred from speaking with the press.

Perhaps it's because the past couple of years have been a whirlwind of real and threatened cutbacks, with happy endings offered up only in the final moments. Two years ago the state library budget was slashed by 37 percent. At my local library, librarians put up flyers explaining that they didn't have new books or newspapers because they couldn't afford them. Regulars who missed their favorite newspapers would offer to pay for the subscriptions but the librarians refused. Such contributions would have only masked the true problem.

Faced with this unworkable acquisitions budget, the state increased the following year's funding by 10 percent. But 2005 has offered a whole new set of problems, including severe cutbacks to 10 libraries, 17 pink slips and a shock to City Council -- the $1 million they allotted to the libraries had actually been diverted by the mayor and city administration.

Finally, citizens were irritated enough to complain, write columns and call the members of City Council. Both the mayor and City Council agreed to increase the library budget by $3.5 million.

Unfortunately, this thievery from our nation's libraries demonstrates that you have to take a lot from the people before anyone is willing to stand up and bear witness for what they care about. While some of what was taken has been restored, much remains missing. State library funding is still $23 million short of the 2002-03 budget.

What we are left with, once we manage to crawl out of the whirlwind, is not so much a gain or a loss but an opportunity. We can choose to recognize libraries for the kingdoms they truly are. In each small brick, stone or stucco outpost, we find the ultimate protector of democratic civilization. In each outwardly humble structure lies the words of kings, gods, presidents and prisoners. The dreams of children are nestled in one corner, in another the tools and realities of grown men and women await. Where else can you go, for free, to ask how to write your first resume? And if you have no computer, where else can you go to type that resume? Where else can your children wait for you after school, without charge, until you can pick them up at seven or even eight o'clock?

A couple years ago, Philadelphia's Northwest Regional Library was struck by lightning, and it's still not open. There has been a good deal of staff loss, and while renovations are complete, the locals still wait to use the computers and read the books kept behind closed doors. I used to play checkers there with one boy after school. His father would come to pick him up at seven every night. He chided his son for making up his own rules.

"You can't jump them like that," he told his son, who handed me back my checker.

Government officials often try to jump past the rules. They are allotted the certainly difficult job of squeezing state and city services out of what must always seem an insufficient sum of money. But when the choice is between stadiums and schools, patronage and libraries, we must be prepared to remind them of our nation's priorities. What keeps a democracy democratic if not the combined wisdom of the people? And what is a better defender of the people's wisdom than a free library system?

It is true that if we cut taxes, many of us would gain in individual wealth. We could have wider TVs and more pairs of shoes sewn in stranger shapes and brighter colors. Or, we could pay taxes and gain in collective knowledge, in community lecture series, in books, audio and video.

But let's be realistic. Who should care about a few library cutbacks when you can just browse the Penn Bookstore, when you have your own computer? Unless, of course, you are that student who typed all his college applications on a library computer, in 60 minute intervals, because that's how long you get with the keyboard before your reservation expires.

Or maybe, you're that student who discovered that with a library card, you can take out DVDs for free.

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