As a lasting legacy, there is nothing more important we can do than to make sure everyone has free and open access to reading. Whether it's celebrating banned book week or risking jail time in support of reader privacy, librarians have always stood up for the rights of writers. It&'s time that we stood up for them.

Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

But libraries seem to be losing out in the funding battles, due, in part, to the mistaken belief that they are somehow anachronistic in an age when so many Americans have instant computer access to information through the Internet. This is, frankly, a let-them-eat-cake-attitude that threatens to destroy a network of public assets that remains critical in our country.

They've helped me as a researcher, a frustrated computer user, a harried mother, a baffled citizen…whatever my problem, they can find a resource to help solve it. At this point, with so many other cuts to government and education services, libraries and librarians have been handling the spillover problems (most recently, they helped everybody, especially senior citizens, figure out how to access tax forms online) -- I worry that the cuts to libraries will leave us all without a safety net, without human help in navigating the bureaucracy, and without computer access for a significant percentage of our citizens. I don't think we have any idea how much of a load libraries have been carrying, and I worry that we're going to find out the hard way. (read more at Estella's Revenge)