Libraries As A Catalyst For Rejuvenation

How about investing in the public library again since we need to be a knowledge based economy and your taxes already pay for it? The library offers databases, multimedia materials and computers to help you with research, employment information and inforation that can assist small businesses. Since small business are 50% of our economy why not improve them by using the resources available? Let's examine what do public libraries bring to your economy Florida's research indicate that for every dollar they invested they had a $6.54 return!

The $449 million invested in Florida’s public libraries yields a total economic return of $2.9 billion.

http://mblc.state.ma.us/advisory/trustees/economic_value_20041101.pdf 

This shows what we can do so why are we divesting away funds, when more than anything with a high adult illiteracy rate, high ESL rate and high unemployment rate there are more users coming to the library everyday and more funds are needed?

What does someone sacrifice by relying on Google as a reference service?

"… reference librarians, of course, use computers, use Google to help them search, but they put some element of intelligence into it that the computer cannot do by itself. […] the reference librarian will understand emotions and other nonfactual information that even a fully intelligent computer may have trouble with…" from an interview with Craig Silverstein, Google Director of Technology

Source: CNET news.com May 10, 2004