To the Editor,

 

Your May 6th editorial on the PATRIOT act asks the reader to imagine his or her teenager waiting in line to borrow books from the local library. The editorial goes on to state that  “Americans have a fundamental right to read whatever they choose… You can look it up.” Sadly, in today’s Springfield we cannot “look it up” at our convenience, and can barely exercise our fundamental right to read whatever we choose at our public libraries.

 

Why? Because the board of trustees of the Springfield Library and Museums Association has chosen permanently to close three branch libraries, to sell another branch library, and to lay off more than 70 employees over the last year.

 

Why and how has a funding cut of 3% from the city resulted in these drastic measures? That’s what the city council formed a study committee to find out. Much to the committee’s frustration, requests for information on spending practices have been met with formidable resistance from the board of trustees of the SLMA. The board meets secretly and has refused to make public the minutes of its meetings.

 

The previous day’s editorial (5/5/03) bemoans the closing of “a single library anywhere in America,” except, presumably, in Springfield, as the editorial goes on to warn the city councilors of the “mixed motives” of the study committee they commissioned. Not a single person spoke against the study committee’s preliminary findings at Monday’s meeting. Yet your lead to the article covering the meeting (5/6/03) stated that “some residents expressed concern” at the ideas presented.

 

Why would your newspaper oppose the PATRIOT act, (which seeks to limit essential American freedoms in bookstores and libraries), while simultaneously defending what appears to be secrecy and mismanagement at libraries that have the effect of limiting public access to the free information you wish to defend? 

 

There are many questions about libraries in Springfield that deserve to be answered. Since the publisher of the Republican, David Starr, sits on the board of trustees of the SLMA (and has done so for far longer than the three-year term recommended by the MA Board of Library Commissioners), perhaps he can publish the materials the board seems loathe to supply to the library study committee and thus explain situation to us all.

 

Erica Walch

29 Mattoon St.

Springfield, MA 01105