I have never met Susan Wise Bauer. I have not read one of her well-received books on homeschooling or the history of the world. I have seen great reviews of her book of the Art of Public Grovel, but have yet to read it. (I would love to review it here). But I do occasionally read her blog because I am in awe of the way she writes so prolifically from a small building on her family farm outside of Williamsburg, VA.
It seems that Bauer has become a victim of budget cuts to her public library. Because she does not live in the same county as the Williamsburg Regional Library she has been forbidden to check out books or have a library card. I will let Bauer explain it through an excerpt from a letter she wrote to the library:
Mr. Moorman,
I am absolutely appalled–and angry–to learn of the library’s new policy.
I have lived in Charles City County for most of my life. I teach literature and writing at William and Mary and have four children. As you may know, we have no permanent library in Charles City, and my children had read their way through the entire “collection” here by the time they were in middle school.
I have been using the Williamsburg Public Library myself since 1973, and have used it for my children for the last nineteen years. Those of us who live in Charles City, particularly on the eastern end (over an hour away from the Richmond library) have nowhere else to go. We have always considered WRL our public library, and have supported it in every possible manner. I am on a first-name basis with the children’s librarians, who have watched my children grow from preschool through university age, and who have always welcomed us warmly into the stacks. I, my husband, my children, and my parents all hold library cards and make regular use of them.
It was bad enough when the Board of Trustees decided to limit the reference and checkout services to non-county residents, but we coped with this change (unhappily, I might add). But now I learn that my family’s library cards–all eight of them–will become completely invalid on February 1…
The last time I was in the library–last week–I checked out three books for my ten-year-old daughter that I had read myself at the age of ten. Not just the titles, but the SAME BOOKS from the same library. I passed them on to her with delight. It never occurred to me that this tradition would come to an abrupt end.
Read more about Bauer’s predicament, including her entire letter and the lame response she received from the library director, at her blog, The History of the (Whole) World.”
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