I needed to return books and get some fresh reading material. I'm a reading machine. It's appalling.The Fort Worth East Regional Library is a short distance from my abode.
Very convenient.
I've liked going to the library since I was a very little kid. I grew up a block away from the Burlington City Library. I was very young when I got addicted to reading kid's books about the Wild West. This gave me a very distorted view of what happened at Little Big Horn that was not fixed til a long time later when I read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.
I digress.
Today when the library came in to view I saw the parking lot was almost full. The Fort Worth Library is very well-used. But the public is very ill-served by the Fort Worth Library, well, more by the City of Fort Worth, which has cut back on library hours and days open.
To my way of thinking cutting back on library hours is one of the last places you want to be cutting back. If you saw all the kids I saw in the library today, after hours, on a school day, you might come to the same conclusion.
Why has none of that HUGE Barnett Shale windfall that fell on the City of Fort Worth been spread on the library? Maybe Fort Worth's saint of a mayor, Mike Moncrief, could donate the more than $600,000 he makes a year from the gas drillers operating in the town in which he is not supposed to do business with anyone where he has a Conflict of Interest, to the Fort Worth Public Library. If Moncrief did this I promise I'll never mention his criminal behavior and need to be jailed and fined, again.
Since the library cutbacks, another thing is bugging me. The Fort Worth Library is the only library I've ever been in where I get stuck waiting in a long line to check out books. This problem has only arisen, near as I've noticed, during the Library Cutback era.
Now, I have seen with my own eyes that there are libraries in Texas that are very efficient and ultra-modern. For instance, the City of Grapevine Public Library has a self-checkout method. This seemed like a very good idea. I have seen libraries on the West Coast with this checkout method. I was pleased and surprised to see this efficiency had migrated to Texas.
But, unfortunately, not to Fort Worth.
4 comments:
Get yourself a Texshare Library Card and come on up here. Colleyville has self checkout too, but I never use it because it's more pleasant to have a short chat with the librarians since there's no line.
In the time you spend in line, you could drive up at least to Hurst, check out your books, maybe stop by the NE Mall for cup of coffee, and still get home quicker. Well, maybe that's a bit of a stretch to squeeze the coffee in, but this IS Texas, home of big tales.
They're building a library just a few miles from my house. It's supposed to open in the fall. I have my fingers crossed, all will be well and I wont be disappointed. You're right; a quality city shouldn't or wouldn't be closing libraries.
Steve A---
I think you've mentioned the Texshare Library Card before. I'm thinking I need to look into this. I like chatting with the librarians, too, but not when I have to wait a long time to do so! The NE Mall is very close. I am assuming the Hurst library is nearby?
arlington and haltom city take anyone with a texas driver's license that is correct!
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