After the British learned of the fire that burned Chicago to the ground, they sent something that was believed to be essential to civilization.
They sent books. Enough to fill a public library.
Over time, the Chicago Public Library grew as the city grew, with branches added to neighborhoods so that people could have access to books.
These days, it isn't so much the books that people want, but the computers and the shelter and the free after-school care.
Given the high cost of operating so many facilities, it's become impossible to keep them all open and fully staffed. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a product of the toney suburb of Wilmette, has proposed cuts to the library budget as a way to tackle the city's severe fiscal headaches.
No one wants to see fewer police on the streets, or fewer garbage trucks or fewer pothole repair crews. So what can be bent yet not broken? The library.
A library can function with one librarian instead of three. Not well, but people will have to learn to wait their turn when they have a question or need help locating a book or logging onto a job search on the computer terminal.
Readers can learn to wait for the library to open, so if it means getting in at noon instead of nine a.m. on a Monday morning, they'll have to to deal with the inconvenience.
Sadly, there are fewer and fewer patrons to be inconvenienced. Library usage has been declining year after year. Reading a book for free is no longer seen as the escape that it once was. There's mindless television for that.
The school system in Chicago is failing to crank out educated people. At the rate they're going, there won't be much need for most of the branch libraries at all. After all, if people don't know how to read, they don't have much interest in going to a building that's built expressly to house and distribute reading materials.
That's when the city can realize some real cost savings, but at an expense that can't be calculated on an Excel spreadsheet.
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