February 7, 2001

Even second-class citizens deserve access to first class libraries

We are talking and thinking about a new library in Pacifica. It will have some advantages. There will even be so-called "virtual library" satellites, places with computer access, where books and materials can be ordered, picked up and returned. The promise is that the one new library to replace both our current libraries will be larger, with more books, more services, more computers.

My concerns are for the needs of persons without cars, for elementary and high school students, for the handicapped, and for the elderly who don't have easy access to transportation. Sam Trans is almost useless for getting around town. Unless you drive a car in Pacifica, you really are a second-class citizen, and only first class citizens will find our new library a convenient place to visit and enjoy.

For me this new library will be fine. It will have more of what I use a library for, and I can compensate for any drawbacks by driving to other libraries elsewhere in and out of the county as needed, or I can go on the Internet or to a bookstore, or other sources of information.

I've had the advantage of using libraries all my life. I know a lot about libraries. I've got the habit, and the experience. I could probably be a librarian with a few hours of training, at least good enough to help some people with some problems. I can give you a good general review of the Dewey Decimal System from memory.

I tell you all this not to brag, but to explain how important libraries have been in my life. Libraries are temples of serendipity, where wonderful discoveries can be made by any child able to spend some unplanned time in random explorations. For every such child it will be a different experience. I discovered Horatio Alger and Peter B. Kyne during my childhood. There isn't one boy in 10,000 today who'd be caught dead reading Alger, and only one in a thousand would read Kyne, but both were important to me.

I know more about computers, geology and electronics today than anyone did in 1940. That's not bragging. Any school child above the age of ten can know far more about computers now than the most knowledgeable person in 1940. If I'd stopped learning about geology the day I finished my formal education, I'd be abysmally ignorant of the subject as it's known today. Geology is exciting. Computers are exciting. The Internet is exciting. And the library has lots of information on all three, and on a thousand other subjects that have changed remarkably in the past 50 years.

I want the boys and girls in Pacifica's schools to have easy access to libraries they can use and enjoy and learn at and from.

If kids have to depend on their parents to get them to the one library in town in private cars, most won't get there much. If they get to the library once in a while, they won't build up the habits of library use needed to last them a lifetime. If they don't visit the library regularly, the serendipity, the excitement, the thrill of discovery may not be there. Think of the boy who's never heard of Sherlock Holmes and discovers the "Red Headed League" for the first time on the library shelves. It's not enough to have a library. We have to find a way to make that library accessible to every reader. And I mean EVERY reader.

E-mail Paul Azevedo at thereactor@earthlink.net or visit his website, http://home.earthlink.net/~thereactor/