To The Point show for
Friday, December 3, 2004

Are America's Public Libraries in Danger?

Interview with Anna Caballero, Mayor of Salinas (Streaming Audio)

Outside the John Steinbeck Library in Salinas, California, a life-size statue of the Nobel-Prize winning author wears a black armband. The library will be closing next summer. Buffalo, New York will start closing all 52 of its libraries next Tuesday. Public libraries in 41 states are reducing staffs, cutting their operating hours and closing branches. Has the anti-tax movement eroded America's most basic priorities? Are local officials using beloved institutions to cover up waste in other places? We hear more about the danger facing America's libraries from administrators, civic leaders, sociologists, experts in government finance, and the head of the American Library Association.