[CIMC-working] [AnitaNFD@aol.com: Library advocates conduct informational picket at main library]

[donald goldhamer]

CIMC writers and researchers,

Here's a topic which, after we recover from DC, might be worth expanding
into an article or even a feature.  There is a picture (deleted).  Can we
get one of the Library group to supplement their earlier article (#14810)?

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From: AnitaNFD@aol.com
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 18:00:57 EDT
Subject: Library advocates conduct informational picket at main library

Library advocates conduct informational picket at main library

  On Tues. Oct 22, fifteen committed library advocates conducted an 
informational picket, handing out 400 flyers to interested library patrons 
and visitors, in front of Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S State St. 
for the purpose of informing visiting authors and their audiences that 
Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey is using Chicago Book Month as a PUBLIC 
RELATIONS COVER all the while continuing to downsize the central library's 
book collections and get rid of most of its reference staff. (Writer Thomas 
Steinbeck, son of the great American novelist, was appearing at the library 
to read from his latest book during Chicago Book Month.)

[From left to right:  NEAL RESNIKOFF, JEFF COUFAL, JOSE MARTI, DAVID WILLIAMS 
(organizer of the picket) and ANITA LATHROP.]

  Recently dozens of veteran librarians have either been forced into early 
retirement or transferred from the main library (in violation of their union 
contract) to branches where their knowledge and experience will be grossly 
underutilized. Beneath the glitzy facade of Chicago Book Month is the 
grinding everyday reality of a library system which despite its physical size 
has always been hard-pressed to provide enough books in a wide range of 
subject areas to its various user populations (including most of Chicago's 
public and private students at all levels). Already inadequate to Chicago's 
needs by the last decade of the 20th century, the book budget has not been 
increased in the eight years of Commissioner Dempsey's reign, even as book 
prices have continued to skyrocket, and in 2002 the book budget was further 
slashed by 20 percent to pay for more computer databases.

  From the accelerated construction of cookie-cutter branches serving mainly 
as Internet kiosks to anchor neighborhood gentrification, Dempsey's Internet 
mania now extends to turning the main library itself into a GLORIFIED 
INTERNET KIOSK -- in addition to its regular function as an architectural 
magnet for glitzy public events. Where is the critical realization that, 
despite its many useful functions, the Internet is NOT a complete substitute 
for good, in-depth book collections and reference staffs who know how to 
build and access them? But now, under the "Book Mayor," such collections will 
give way to the installation of more Internet terminals and a downsized 
reference staff whose main function will be to help the public log-on...

  On behalf of serious readers, hard-pressed students, occasional scholars, 
unrepentant book-lovers and thinking citizens, we demand---

BRING BACK OUR REFERENCE LIBRARIANS AND SUBJECT SPECIALISTS!

INCREASE THE BOOK BUDGET AND LIBRARY STAFF SYSTEM WIDE!

WE WANT INTERNET AND LIBRARIES TOO! 

For more information call Librarians & Patrons Public Alert at 773-244-1480 
or send e-mail to unionneighbor@yahoo.com

"Reading Proust on a computer is like looking at Normandy through a 
bombsight."