A Door Closes for Book Lovers

* Do you hear the doors slamming? Does it wake you up? Another public library closes its doors to patrons! Cypress Public Library will serve its patrons five days a week, instead of the current six, instead of the seven days a week of three years ago.

Will it keep you awake? Those shut doors mean young people are shut off from access to the knowledge and pleasure books can provide. Whether they seek printed materials as a consequence of school assignments or whether they are following their self-initiated quest for information, the students are denied by closed doors.

Are we taxpayers providing what our community needs? Do our minority groups have the access they need to develop their language skills, their work skills, their understanding of the American culture? These are the groups most affected by lack of library services.

So what, you say? Do we hear the doors slamming? They are closing on all of us. Remember the “good old days” when part of the family weekly activity was the trip to the public library. It was a trip “around and out of this world” for today’s parents and their parents.

The Placentia Library District, in a bold move, is asking the citizens of Placentia to vote on the expenditure of 56 cents per week per household for five years. It cannot be increased and it cannot be continued beyond five years. Citizens of the County of Orange are watching to see if two-thirds of Placentia voters will say yes to Measure W. Do residents of Placentia care enough to keep the doors from slamming?

MARIE SCHMIDT

Placentia