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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 13, 1993                   TAG: 9301130371
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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PUBLIC LIBRARIES NOT JUST A NICETY

AT A PUBLIC hearing in Roanoke last week, one speaker likened a proposed 50-percent cut in state spending for public libraries to government censorship.

It's not quite that bad. But consider:

State funds devoted to libraries - now about $10 million a year - are used mostly to purchase books. In some poorer, often rural, localities, the public libraries virtually have no other source of funds for this purpose; the local government's contribution won't stretch to stocking the shelves.

If state funds are reduced by 50 percent, access to newer books will be denied patrons of many libraries. That suppresses the free flow of ideas, opinions, creative expression and information. It's not the same as censorship, but it has similarly ill effects.

Libraries - possibly the most democratic of all institutions - have friends in high places in the General Assembly. Legislators blocked Gov. Wilder's plans to lop library appropriations last year, and likely will do so again.

But even if the $5 million is restored, state money for public libraries over the past four years has declined to only $1.63 per Virginian. This suggests that too many state policy-makers see libraries as expendable niceties, as if all they do is provide a place for parents to drop off the kiddies for story hour on Saturday morning.

Perhaps too few policy-makers see them for what they are: major resource centers in nearly every community, providing public entertainment, education and information.

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