From Save NYC Public Libraries.Join us on October 31st for our Librarian Zombie Walk to City Hall!!!
"So it’s time for mid year budget adjustments. What’s that you say? I thought we were done until next year! Nope. The mid year budget adjustment will result in a further cut of 5.4%. These new cuts will result in even less service hours and more layoffs.
Our library budgets have already been cut to the bone, and these further reductions in funding will just degrade library service further. We’ve already lost Saturday Service in most of the city. It’s likely these cuts will be the end of what we have left. So those working parents taking their kids to the library on the weekend? Tough, not open. Can’t return your books during the week because you work 60 hours just to live? Tough, closed on the weekend.
What does any of this have to do with zombies? Well, without libraries there are simply no brains, and zombies need to eat brains to live. So New York’s zombie librarians will be walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall this Halloween to protest these drastic cuts to their food supply."
Meet us in the circle at the west end of Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, next to the High Street A, C Station at 11am on October 31st.
Posts
4 comments:
Bloomberg has money available for things like the Atlantic Yards because it benefits the rich, but cuts services to libraries because he does not really care all that much about the lower classes - which means anyone who isn't a millionaire. You go zombrarians!
Is ** less ** service possible?
While I wouldn't deny anyone's right to watch internet porn in the library (really), the basic ** MAINTENANCE ** of even the central branch at GAP is pathetic--
Broken microfilm readers for months on end; stairways that haven't been swept-- or, forbid!-- mopped in weeks; a 'brain drain' of older more skilled librarians in favor of what appear to me mere clerks, many of whom appear DISINTERESTED.
Props to the Brooklyn Collection for making do as they can but BPL is already being treated shamefully-- I won't even get into the highly variable state of the branches-- but everyone should be ashamed, and furious, the situation has gotten so bad.
I was at the main branch today and got what I needed and I know that they are doing their best with what life has thrown at them but the smaller branches such as the Carroll Gardens are a joke as they barely have any BOOKS!!!
They were selling them off for a long time, now they GIVE them away. What's up with that?!!!
Libraries with no books. What a concept.
RIght, I would say most people at BPL try, and do well under difficult circumstances... And isn't that ironic in some ways when there's MUCH more affluence around the main branch?
Some of the clerks/librarians on the ground floor in reading room are really poorly trained and seemingly sit there without motivation or much supervision. I know there are better people there too but there's a real sense of helplessness it seems.
On weekends, esp. in winter, genealogy folks use the microfilm A LOT so it's absurd to have five or six out of eight machines broken for months on end.
The answers I get from the clerk/librarians vary widely in truthfulness and creativity too.
I was told, by the way, re: Carroll Gardens, that they were told to STOP their weekend book swaps. By whom, and why? I noticed Brooklyn Heights-- which is a horrible branch, tho' they "No Playing Cards At Table" signs are funny-- does a weekly book sale. Why are they allowed?
Catalog acquisition at BPL is pathetic these days; if they didn't have the foresight generations ago it'd be near worthless today. Check out the music and art books on the 3rd floor and notice how OLD most of them are... I'm delighted they are there but I shouldn't have to do iner-library loan for everything.
Post a Comment