If we
cannot afford libraries in Prince George's County, it may be time to rethink
government itself. Perhaps we need fewer high level political employees with 6
figure salaries. Where do our high priced political leaders think those of us
without jobs wit find access to computers and the internet to apply? Madison
pointed out that a functioning democracy needs open access to information for
all citizens - we seem to be heading in the opposite direction - government of
the rich, for the rich and by the rich.
Now, more
than ever, is the time to expand libraries and library services in Prince George's County. If our
government cannot figure this out, perhaps now is the time to reexamine the
government itself. Libraries in Prince George's County, the idea of public
libraries, reach back more than two hundred years. The first library in Prince
George's was in Upper Marlboro and chartered by the government immediately following
the War of 1812. Among its foremost advocates was Dr. Beanes of Star Spangled Banner
fame. He and his colleagues recognized the fundamental importance of equal access
to information for a democracy in a representative government.
Prince
George's County needs to tell the political elite that, to paraphrase the Turkish
playwright, novelist & thinker, Mehmet
Murat ildan, you can build a thousand
castles, casinos and strip malls; even with a thousand sanctuaries, you are
nothing; when you build a library, you are everything! The high and mighty seem
to have forgotten that, as “A library is a different kind of social reality (of
the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of
values beyond the fiscal.” ― Zadie Smith
“The
public library is where place and possibility meet.” ― Stuart Dybek
“Perhaps
no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The
only entrance requirement is interest.” ―
Claudia Alta Johnson
“A
library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a
life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the
soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only
sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead” ― Caitlin Moran
“Libraries
allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the
wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to
learning are always open.” ― Laura Bush
“The
very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope
for the future of man” ― T.S. Eliot
“What a
school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.”
― Harold Howe
“The
only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” -
― Albert Einstein
“In the
library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood
them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was
easier to spot a lie.” ― Jeanette Winterson
“Libraries
store the energy that fuels the imagination. They open up windows to the world
and inspire us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality
of life. Libraries change lives for the better.” ― Sidney Sheldon
“He who
has a garden and a library wants for nothing.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero
quotes taken from "Quotes About Library" http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/library?page=1