Library addition worth your vote

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: September 17, 2007

Tucked in the basement of the Waynesboro Public Library is a children's area, a large meeting room and cramped storage rooms where shelves are stocked, in part, with an overflow of books from the main collection and materials from a packed-to-the-gills genealogy room.

If you've not seen this area, it might well be because the only public access point, aside from a locked elevator, is a door downstairs, requiring people on the top floor to exit the building to get there.

Friends of the Waynesboro Public Library President Velma Ryan worries that the setup both upstairs and downstairs is more than just inconvenient. Some portions of the genealogy area don't meet standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act — a particular problem, she says, since the library's vast collection of genealogy materials is largely used by the elderly. There also are concerns about the children's librarian work area being essentially cut off from the main library.

To address these problems, library officials want to build a 4,000 square-foot addition that they say would minimize operating costs, bring the library into ADA compliance and make the facility more user-friendly. The expansion also would create room for more books. The price tag is $1.2 million.

The project is among the items that will appear on a referendum in the fall. We urge voters to back it.

While talk of expansion has lingered for years without action, the number of registered borrowers has more than tripled and circulation has doubled since 1975. Materials have been pulled from the main collection and ultimately discarded because of inadequate shelf space. Meanwhile, the number of programs for adults and children has increased along with attendance.

An addition would accommodate these changes and result in an improved library. That's a good thing for our community.

Quantifying a library's importance is difficult, but the American Library Association offers this: "It is the only institution in American society whose purpose is to guard against the tyrannies of ignorance and conformity, and its existence indicates the extent to which a democratic society values knowledge, truth, justice, books, and culture."

That's a mission people in the news business could adopt as their own, and we wholeheartedly support it. We hope voters do, too.