April 7, 2010 – Full remarks of Peter Golden, forming the basis of a brief speech delivered at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston on the proposed closing of various Boston Public Library branch locations. Peter is a native Bostonian, former BPS teacher, former resident user of the library, and current non-Boston resident user of the library.

Contact for Peter: petewrites [at] aol {dot} com

Good evening friends and fellow readers. My name is Peter Golden and I grew up in Boston and lived in Brighton, The South End, Dorchester and Roslindale at various times in my life. During the decade of the 1970s I taught in the Boston Public Schools. I now live in the suburbs, but tonight I return to the city of my birth with a heavy heart.

Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older – roughly 77 million people – used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year according to a recent Gates Foundation study. The use of library technology had significant impact in four critical areas (according to the study): employment, education, health, and making community connections.

Numerous sources indicate increasing use of libraries in times of economic crisis and all of us with children and grandchildren know well the value of Boston Public Library branches to young families seeking to introduce youngsters to reading and to elders on limited incomes in search of a good read.

To suggest to a young mother or an enfeebled older person that while their neighborhood branch may be closing they still can access another ìonly a mile or so awayî verges on cruelty.

As a kid growing up in Brighton in the 1950s, a tiny, second floor branch library on Harvard Street in the midst of a busy commercial district inspired my imagination and gave direction to my life. I read my way through the sports and science fiction shelves, and when the librarian from the BPL bookmobile that came faithfully to the Harriet Baldwin school every Wednesday in the 1950s shoved an anthology of modern fiction under my nose one day I was instantaneously hooked on literature. That I am a writer by profession today is a direct result of my access to a neighborhood BPL branch.

Libraries are gateways into the highest levels of learning. Salutati knew this seven hundreds years ago in the dawning days of the Renaissance, when he selectively promoted various books of classical literature from Petrarch’s collections to lend spirit and practical know how to the beleaguered Florentines. With new knowledge of democratic practice, agriculture and warfare from ancient sources, Florence was able to fend off the menacings of the Milanese. The modern era began in a library.

Boston bears a proud tradition of reading and literacy. Horace Mann, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, James Jackson Storrow and many others insisted that Boston’s children and adults alike, not just those of means, but all of them, be educated and have access to books. Before the Civil War, the great humanist and writer Lydia Maria Child was banned from one of this city’s best private libraries for promoting the freeing of the slaves. No one has ever been banned from a Boston Public Library, to my knowledge, for any political or social leaning.

Today, many of our public schools are without libraries. Is anyone within sound of my voice seriously suggesting that one, never mind four of our precious neighborhood branches and their dedicated staffs are expendable when some of our children go to schools without libraries?

The real meaning of the current shortfall in the BPL library budget is not just that insane foreign wars and ruinously unregulated financial markets have had a pervasive, destructive impact on our economy and caused dramatic cuts in state and municipal tax revenues. Nor is it a factor of “sharing the pain” across various city departments.

It is that our political leaders at the federal, state and municipal level, most especially the Boston City Council and the trustees and staff leaders of the Boston Public Libraries need to rethink their vision for our neighborhood branches, these precious oasis of literature, sociability and opportunity. We should not be talking about closing branches, but rather strengthening them.”

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