AL Kennedy has won the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year award for her novel, Day. In her acceptance speech, she advocated for funding to purchase more books for Scottish libraries and schools:
"If you ensure that people can become writers if they wish to, you ensure that your population is able to express itself. If you cannot say what you wish to say, you have no freedom of speech, you have no democracy, you have no possibility to think that the country could be better than it is, or that you could be better than you are."
Ah, you see? She said it better than I did, in my attempt only moments ago!
While I agree with her 100%, I believe we can all argue that underfunding for schools and libraries is a universal problem. Los Angeles libraries and the LAUSD face extremely difficult funding concerns as we move into 2008. In August, Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed $15 million in public library funding. Now, just a few months later, dominoes begin to fall. The Covina City Library is on the verge of closure. If it is unable to secure the funding it needs soon, the library will close this summer, marking the first library forced shut in California history. A terrible shame.
