Your Nov. 16 editorial on the closing of libraries being the ”cruelest cut” in Mayor Daley`s proposed budget was right on target. Stevenson Swanson gave insight into the ”unfulfilled promise” of the Harold Washington Library Center in a Nov. 13 article that pointed out many systems in the $144 million building simply don`t work.
Our Ravenswood-Lake View Historical Association, affiliated with the Chicago Public Library since 1935, adopted a resolution that deplores draconian cuts in library funding. During the past 20 years, library buildings have been improved or expanded in 29 of the city`s 50 wards, but staffing has been cut more than 27 percent, not counting the federally supported CETA employees who were dropped in 1979.
Now Mayor Daley proposes to cut 47 additional library employees, close the Harold Washington Library Center on Mondays and curtail branch library hours at the expense of students and citizens who need information services for study and work.
Cutting library staff and book expenditures is penny wise and pound foolish, because we thereby damage efforts at workforce literacy, work readiness and the improvement of products of the Chicago public schools.
