Now is the time to expand libraries and library services in Prince George's County

               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