comments

Cuts in library hours come at a bad time

Clark Hughes | chughes3@mlive.com By Clark Hughes | chughes3@mlive.com
on September 19, 2009 at 1:25 PM

Voice: Paul Blanchard, Flushing

I was very disappointed to learn of recent cuts in library hours throughout the Genesee County District Library system. In Flushing, where I live, our library's hours have been cut by 16 hours per week or a full 25 percent from the previous schedule!

Our library, like most throughout Genesee County, is truly a community center for our citizens. My wife and I are usually there two or three or times every day and the library is almost always busy with individuals of all ages, especially children, teens and senior citizens.

I am concerned that limiting the hours in such a drastic fashion will discourage some of these people from using the library, at a time when they need it most. I know that these are difficult times financially and budgetarily, but it is in times like these are when a facility like a public library is even more essential.

I notice that a substantial number of patrons these days are using the library to look for jobs or to seek new educational opportunities. I fear that discouraging them by cutting the library hours could have the effect of actually prolonging the economic difficulties of our troubled county.

I hope that library patrons throughout the Flint area will protest these cuts and request that some or most of these hours be restored. Certainly, The Flint Journal could be a helpful ally in this regard.
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/09/cuts_in_library_hours_come_at.html
www.mlive.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2013-20
88141
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ZHZTZENM6QTHMYUUWRPQU4AC3F67TUBM
<urn:uuid:001e0772-f778-45ff-b471-98257ecd4098>
2013-06-19T18:30:03Z
23.0.160.57
sha1:YNHF2LXSJBG5CAPLYJA7WQXJH4NER66F
<urn:uuid:4fbc40a1-ea94-4b42-9e85-f4701fd15a76>
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/09/cuts_in_library_hours_come_at.html
response
<urn:uuid:341165f9-b797-4db2-9e00-44ba7decd22a>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2013-20
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Spring 2013
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf