3 months ago
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Harvest Fest
I am looking forward to Harvest Fest this weekend. It has always been my favorite weekend in town.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Library Problem
There is a little known new law on the books which affects small libraries in particular. Up until now you could go into the Green Lake library and request a book or movie and if the library didn't have it you could go to Ripon and get it. It wasn't much of an issue for anyone.
The new law says the library loaning the materials can now charge for this service. This creates a very big problem for very small libraries. The smaller the library, the fewer materials on hand. Consequently when people use a library not in their county, your local libary gets charged. This takes away resources from your home library. If that library is not in your county(Ripon is in Fond du Lac County for example) that county can now charge your home library for that service. This does not sound like it could be much but it can run up to several thousand dollars a year. (In Madison or the Fox Valley their is an estimate it could run up into $20-30,000/ year). We don't know yet.
The smaller library probably also has a smaller budget. This means people with the fewest resources now have fewer and people who live in more rural areas and probably need access to materials through a long winter have less access because the smaller library will not be able to provide the means to get access to the material from the larger library. This law was created by issues with bigger libraries in the more southern counties(Madison, Milwaukee) who lobbied their state reps who came up with this great idea.
The upshot of this foolish law is that now there is going to be more and more limited access to materials to the smallest libraries with the clients who need the materials the most. Libraries will not be "free and open" any more. They will quickly become very limited in what they can provide to their clients. This law is in the very eary stages but in the long run it will be very destructive to the people and libraries which need them the most.
The new law says the library loaning the materials can now charge for this service. This creates a very big problem for very small libraries. The smaller the library, the fewer materials on hand. Consequently when people use a library not in their county, your local libary gets charged. This takes away resources from your home library. If that library is not in your county(Ripon is in Fond du Lac County for example) that county can now charge your home library for that service. This does not sound like it could be much but it can run up to several thousand dollars a year. (In Madison or the Fox Valley their is an estimate it could run up into $20-30,000/ year). We don't know yet.
The smaller library probably also has a smaller budget. This means people with the fewest resources now have fewer and people who live in more rural areas and probably need access to materials through a long winter have less access because the smaller library will not be able to provide the means to get access to the material from the larger library. This law was created by issues with bigger libraries in the more southern counties(Madison, Milwaukee) who lobbied their state reps who came up with this great idea.
The upshot of this foolish law is that now there is going to be more and more limited access to materials to the smallest libraries with the clients who need the materials the most. Libraries will not be "free and open" any more. They will quickly become very limited in what they can provide to their clients. This law is in the very eary stages but in the long run it will be very destructive to the people and libraries which need them the most.
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About Me
- Chief Highknocker
- You aren't local until you have at least three generations in the cemetery.
