Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 18, 1995 TAG: 9504180123
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LOIS GIBBS AND JUDITH M. FOUST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As we approach Earth Day 1995, we can acknowledge that great strides have been made since Love Canal - monitoring pollution, toxic cleanups and recycling. While some of these gains are now under attack, more Americans are now aware that a healthy environment can't be taken for granted.
But in the decade and a half since Love Canal, another national treasure has been threatened - our library system.
The library at Niagara Falls, so essential in helping Love Canal residents move from anxiety to informed action, is part of a national, public, information infrastructure built a century ago - with support from Andrew Carnegie, but mainly from American taxpayers - to guarantee that knowledge would be available to all.
Today, politicians and pundits herald a ``Third Wave,'' a new era in which information replaces national resources and industrial goods as the chief source of America's wealth. Business guru Peter Drucker hailed ``the rise of the knowledge worker.''
House Speaker Newt Gingrich urges tax breaks for poor citizens to buy laptops. And as Congress moves to deregulate the communications industry, media and phone companies jockey for an edge in the information marketplace.
Just as Republican President Teddy Roosevelt and other conservationists helped create the national-park system at the turn of the century, in today's information-rich society we need to invest in public spaces where information is treated not just as a commodity to be bought and sold, but as a public trust.
Libraries can be ideal public habitats, responsive to local needs and linked through technology to a global information network. But this much-touted surge in information resources will bolster neither our economy nor our democracy unless information is made available equitably and not limited only to people who can pay.
What can we do to conserve public access to information?
At the state and local levels, we can make sure our libraries are there when we need them most. California's public libraries cut hours by 14 percent and material by 25 percent from 1993-94. In Brooklyn, N.Y., where more than 7 million people visited their 60 public libraries last year, there is no public access to the Internet through most libraries.
We must take steps to protect access to public information at the federal level, too. Congress is deciding whether to eliminate already tiny appropriations for literacy programs, library technology and construction. Some lawmakers also want to abolish the Government Printing Office, the public's main source of free government information. And the number of hours the Library of Congress stays open has declined 40 percent since 1993.
Finally, we should include public libraries - and the librarians who make them work - in shaping cyberspace. Last year in New York state, libraries were denied a seat on the governor's Telecommunications Exchange - a 37-member panel charged with charting the future of electronic information access in the state. With a new governor and legislature, it's time to insist on including libraries, which represent the public information user's interests.
As we honor our relationship with our environment on Earth Day, let's honor libraries as a national resources that not only helps to protect our environment but also the health and well-being of our citizens. If we fail to conserve public access to information - especially as it goes on-line - we will face an underprepared work force, a polarized economy and a badly weakened democracy.
And that will be fertile ground for many more Love Canals.
Lois Gibbs, executive director of Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, organized Love Canal residents in 1978. Judith M. Foust is acting director of the Brooklyn Public Library in New York.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
by CNB