You are invited to join Pierce Law Library's celebration of National Library Week, April 13-17. Drop into the library
and register for daily prizes, sample free candy and participate in scheduled
LEXIS and Westlaw training. Be sure to check out the library's growing
collection of National Library Week posters featuring some familiar Pierce Law
personalities. My thanks to Kathy Fletcher for organizing this week's events and
to members of the library staff and Professor Will Grimes for donating many of
the prizes.
Libraries have always been special places for me and I hope you will take a
few minutes out of your busy end-of-semester schedules to think about the
importance of libraries to a free society. Did you know that during the Great
Depression, not a single public library in the United States closed its doors?
Banks went under, farmers went bankrupt, millions were jobless and poor, but
Americans held onto their libraries as symbols of community strength and hope.
The same is true today. Across the country libraries are experiencing
significant increases in use as Americans turn to them for books, DVDs, internet
access and the assistance of librarians to help them through difficult times.
President Obama summed up the importance of American libraries in a 2005
speech to the American Library Association: "More
than a building that houses books and data, the library represents a window to a
larger world, the place where we've always come to discover big ideas and
profound concepts that help move the American story forward and the human story
forward. That's the reason why, since ancient antiquity, whenever those who seek
power would want to control the human spirit, they have gone after libraries and
books. Whether it's the ransacking of the great library at Alexandria,
controlling information during the Middle Ages, book burnings, or the
imprisonment of writers in former communist block countries, the idea has been
that if we can control the word, if we can control what people hear and what
they read and what they comprehend, then we can control and imprison them, or at
least imprison their minds. . . .
At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that
magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.
It's an enormous force for good."
"Libraries will get you through times of no money more than money
will get you through times of no libraries."
Judy
Gire
Library
Director
