2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration internet kitzhaber law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes technology terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

Well said sharonha.  The fact is that the computer, ebooks and the Internet have only scratched the surface of access to information in the world and are not yet ready to replace books.  Until that time, let us please pass this levy and continue to adequately fund our community libraries.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
view in context

Hazelfern, I too believe that government should be held accountable for how they spend tax payer's money.  That is precisely why I am in favor of this levy.  Your statement indicates that perhaps you misunderstand that this is not an additional or incremental tax.  This levy will replace the previous expiring levy.  As another writer mentioned earlier, library spending provides a 500% return on your small tax investment back to the community, and as brenna points out, increases education levels.  Increased education levels means that members of our community are better prepared for better jobs, again improving our community.  Notice the number of statements about how members of our community depend upon the library to help them through these hard times.  You talk about dwindling resources, well the library is a major community resource that we cannot allow to dwindle.  Continuing library funding is good for our community and a good use of tax payer money, especially during hard times.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
view in context

I'll add to Tom's comments.  With a little searching, I was able to find out that Stanford is transitioning one of its many libraries, the Physics, Computer Science and Engineering library into an online center.  The Stanford University Library System contains over 25,000,000 books, so replacing 80,000 is a small drop in the bucket.  And think about what they are doing for a minute.  We are not talking children's books or liesure reading during the commute.  Phy, CS and Eng text are used for college student research.  These topics are changing every day and text in these subjects become outdated very quickly.  Going electronic makes perfect sense in this case.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
view in context