Whenever I have been privileged to visit the Los Angeles Central Library, I have been struck by the words inscribed on its facade: "Books alone are liberal and free. They give to all who ask. They emancipate all who serve them faithfully."
So I was greatly alarmed to learn that in the face of a very serious city budget shortfall, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council have proposed cuts to our 72 city libraries that will reduce their very lifeblood -- those liberating books themselves. They propose to shrink next year's book-buying budget by $2 million -- at a time when people need and want a wider variety of books, not fewer of them.
As an adoptive Angeleno who has called this city home for four decades, I've grown to appreciate Los Angeles' great public library system, which serves the largest population in the nation. But its book funds have been cut so low that today our library system ranks near the bottom of the book-buying list among the nation's 25 largest public library systems. I find it astonishing that our library has only 1.6 books for each resident of Los Angeles -- a city that is one of the cultural hubs of this country. San Francisco's library system has 7.3 books per capita; New York's has 6.2.
