Just one thing, though, the fact that people have internet at home doesn’t do anything to devalue the role of libraries. The internet is a great garbage can, and no serious research or even school homework can be done with google.

The most important role of a library today is, like others have said, to guide people through the information maze. And sincerely, the libraries who can’t manage that task are already useless.

[AL: Possibly. Huckleberry Finn is terrible.]

I am going to tell those puritans who don’t watching men with other men doing naked things to go get a life and stop whining when kids walk by and see it.

Or the scenes of women bound up.

or, well, you get the picture.

AL brings up a good point about high quality, necessary services, unlike the “Give ‘em what they want” rhetoric that has been swirling for years, which proves its worth mainly via circulation numbers. This is fine and dandy during economic boons, but in more difficult times, we realize that these services are unnecessary to our major purpose: providing free access to high-quality info. and, at times, educating the public of our democracy on where to find it/how to use it.

In the end, though, let’s stop whining. We did this to ourselves, and we can change it by refocusing on our historical purpose, and re-educating our public as to our true value. The only thing that worries me is that it will take a lot of hard work; if the posters on this board are any indication of the heart of library employees, I wouldn’t bet on this effort succeeding.

(and Judith, you fool, everyone knows what porn is: it’s the stuff playing on computers in our library with penises going in and out of many orifices of women. And women using foreign objects on other women. Stop playing that stupid, “What is porn?” card. It’s so tiresome!)