![Author Nicholson Baker 'accused [San Francisco City Librarian Ken] Dowlin of the indiscriminate destruction of over 200,000 books, calling the librarian's action 'a hate crime against the past';](images/quote2.jpg) And it is not just the financially
troubled older cities that are closing their libraries for budgetary reasons:
In early 2003 prosperous Montgomery County, Maryland, decided to postpone
indefinitely the reopening of a just renovated public library in Bethesda
to save money on salaries and other operating costs. In California,
the Washington Post reports that stagnant tax revenues have confronted
the city of Oakland with the choice between its struggling libraries and
tax payer subsidies promised earlier to its professional football team,
the Raiders. The Raiders are expected to win the budget battle.
And across the bay in San Francisco, prominent author and preservationist
Nicholson Baker accused the city’s public library of the “indiscriminate
destruction of over 200,000 books” [20 percent of collection], calling
the librarian’s action “a hate crime against the past.”
During
the latter part of the same period, libraries at universities and public
libraries serving the community at large took on additional responsibilities
to provide for the information needs of the communities they served.
Such additional responsibilities include providing meeting and lecture
space for civic and student organizations, space for expanding audio and
visual collections, and, more recently, space for banks of desktop computers
to allow students and other members of the community access to the internet.
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