Teens Help Convince MA Voters to Save Libraries
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By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 11/5/2008 2:00:00 PM
A bunch of teens from Milford, MA, may have been too young to vote in Tuesday’s election, but their efforts to save their state’s public libraries have paid off big-time.
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Kids at the Corbin Library in Webster, MA, enjoying summer programming. |
Jacque Gorman, the teen librarian at the Milford Town Library, asked teen patrons to participate in a three-minute YouTube video clip detailing what the public library means to them. And their responses were truly moving.
“What I would miss if the library is cut back is that I would have no where to go,” said one boy. “I’d have to go home with nothing to do and just wait there for an hour for my parents to come home.”
Another girl said, “I think that the library is like part of our family. My mom used to go there when she was little, and my grandmother used to go there. Now I go there.”
And demonstrating just how cool a destination the library has become for teens, another said, “What I like about the library is I get to see my friends every day.”
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Maureen Ambrosino |
To get the word out, Ambrosino posted a link to the video on the Young Adult Library Services Association message board, Facebook, and her state’s six regional systems’ message boards. Of course, the Massachusetts Library Association, the Massachusetts School Library Association, and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners also worked together to defeat the measure.
Massachusetts residents pay a flat 5.3 percent levy on their income, which provides the state with about 40 percent of its nearly $28 billion budget. The referendum would have taken more than $11 billion out of that total.
How would that have affected library services for kids? It would have seriously cut back programming, after-school and homework help, and author and other speaker visits, as well as led to the layoffs of children and young adult librarians, Ambrosino says.
