This letter was sent to all members of the MP Library Board on 7-23-03
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I'm sorry I could not be with you at the board meeting this evening. The Aquatennial and the Rib Fest raised the cost of parking and made it impossible for me to park within a distance of the library I can manage with an oxygen tank.
The plan the board has worked out for the library does not serve the inner city well, if at all. At the same time that both Sumner and Franklin are closed, Hosmer will experience a shortening of hours. When Franklin closes, Hosmer will have the only tech center in the area. The MPL has as a goal to "ensure equal access to digital information." That goal cannot be served while simultaneously closing Franklin and shortening the hours at Hosmer. Some may go to East Lake, but East Lake has no tech service to offer. Those wanting tech service will overwhelmingly come to Hosmer. Even with the hours Hosmer now has, it can barely handle the 150,000+ people/year using the library or the 14,000 people/year using the tech center. Raising the number of people using Hosmer and shortening the hours means that all the patrons of all three libraries will be short changed.
I want to remind you that over the last several years, six neighborhoods have poured over half a million dollars into Hosmer for a technical center, collection enhancements, and programming. Of those 6 neighborhoods, only one could be classified as middle class, the others all have demographics high in immigrants, people of color, and children but low in income. The choices being made tonight definitely hurt the poor and working class library users in ways that do not affect those in more well to do parts of the city.
I originally began working with my neighborhood and Bryant neighborhood to make Hosmer the library it is today after overhearing a library employee comment that "those people don't read" about Hosmer's patrons. Had that one employee been the only library employee to spout such sentiments, it would not have been necessary to mount the effort to prove her wrong. However, it is many library employees who hold the same sentiment. Hosmer's pilot efforts proved conclusively that that sentiment has no place among library employees or board members. Still, couched in terms of 'everyone has to suffer some cutbacks', the effect of the plans you have outlined operate from the same perspective.
Patrons of Franklin, Sumner, Hosmer, East Lake, and North Regional will definitely suffer more than users of other libraries. These five libraries have fewer patrons with automobiles and fewer with money for transit. These five have a higher concentration of kids using the library. If Franklin is closed and Hosmer's hours are cut, how can East Lake take up so much slack, particularly around computer usage, where it has virtually no equipment at all to serve?
Last year Hosmer served its patrons with only seven staff members, including the security guard and the computer tech trainer. Central library served a little over twice that many with a myriad of floor staff--librarians, aides, and pages--and many computer stations.
While I agree that it is important to be guardians of all the current community and regional libraries, there is room within that configuration to adjust to serve those who most need the services and have the least adequate mobility to reach those services. Library staff will tell you that Washburn has the greatest number of users, but the great majority of those users arrive by automobile. So saying, it will be easier for Washburn patrons to drive to another library than it will be for Franklin, Hosmer, and East Lake patrons to walk or take the bus to Washburn or Walker, neither of which has a tech center or even adequate computer stations.
The poor, the people of color, and the immigrants have shown that they use the library. I would appreciate it if your decisions reflect their needs, rather than subsuming those needs to an "equal" usage which closes two libraries out of five in the inner city, but does not hold the line on hours at the other three inner city libraries.
Yours in struggle,....
Wizard Marks, Central
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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