(My Charge of the Write Brigade post for today--I thought I'd cross-post it here.)

(My Charge of the Write Brigade post for today--I thought I'd cross-post it here.)

Why I Love my Library--and you should too!

I had a great idea for a post today, lost my notes for it, found them again, and then received an email that had a subject important enough to write about here instead.

See, I live in Ohio. We're not in great financial shape at the moment (not nearly as bad as California, but bad enough) and one of the cuts the governor has proposed is an additional 30% cuts statewide for our libraries, both big and small.

And it looks like the cuts will go through.

This will be devastating for small, rural libraries, and that is a terrible thing, because without the small, rural library branch in my hometown, I would never have become the writer I am today.

When my parents and my sister and I moved to my hometown, the local library branch was in a creaky old building where the lights were bare bulbs hanging down to illuminate the stacks (in library vernacular, that's what you call the shelves of books.) It was a magical place for an imaginative child, and I spent hours perusing the shelves, reading everything I could get my hands on (in the children's section, of course), which included biographies, nonfiction books, fantasy, science fiction, mysteries; the list goes on and on.

After a few years, that small library system grew large enough to be able to buy a former hardware store and move there; a few years ago, they actually built a brand new branch and expanded even further.

My first job out of High School was at that library. I shelved books (and read them in secret while putting them into order.) By then, I was already writing books, but that wouldn't have happened if I didn't have the local library to borrow books from--so many books, in fact, that just the agony of having a limit of ten books per week soon fell by the wayside when I read all ten books in two days and moped around the house complaining that there wasn't anything to read.

My mother gave me her set of Charles Dickens that summer, and I read them all, but I loved my library more.

I was a compulsive reader as a child, and as an adult, I still always have to have something to read. I used to choose a subject to research every year--whether it be Elizabethan England, vampires, magic, or American History--and read every book the library owned on that subject. I devoured books. And although my parents had plenty of books in the house, just the idea of having a library close enough to ride my bike to (when my parents would let me do so) so I could fill up my backpack with books and barely make it back to the house without toppling over was better than anything I could ever imagine.

My local library gave me the tools to become the writer I am today, because by reading every single book I could possibly get my hands on, I learned things like grammar, and dialogue, and tension, and why something that arbitrarily appeared on page two had better darned well mean something by page 300. I tuned my writer's ear with the books I read, and my library was one of the main sources of inspiration for the books I write today.

Unfortunately, the libraries' woes won't be solved by a box full of Faerie gold (as I wrote in Budget Cuts), but I still have hope that what I fear will not come to pass.

Sure, nowadays you have the internet instead of library reference books. Everything you've ever wanted to know is found online. But you know what? You have to pay for that internet service. The content might be free, but you have to pay to connect.

Libraries, even now, still don't charge to check out a book (unless you are late returning it, of course.) And when the price of a new hardback runs upwards of $30 nowadays, libraries are truly the best bargains around.

I've heard people caution never to give away anything for free, especially animals, because the people who take them are more likely to treat that animal (or whatever) as a disposable object and not something to be cherished and loved. Well, I feel the same way about libraries. An asset that has been free for the using for so long is now in trouble of vanishing--perhaps forever--and once its gone, it will be gone forever.

We talk and talk and talk about "Save the Whales" and "Save our Environment" and save this and protect that; now it's time to "Save the Libraries"--before it's too late.

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Jennifer St. Clair lives and writes in Southern Ohio. She probably was a librarian in another life. In this one, she spends her spare time gardening--the blackberries are almost ripe!--and trying her best not to be buried under a ton of zucchini. She is also currently trying to teach herself to play the fiddle. So far, no neighbors have complained.