You only need to stroll by the New York Public Library building on 5th Avenue in the big city to know that serious business is done here. The main New York Public Library is a beautiful, iconic building – two handsome lions stand guard out front – that opened in 1911, almost exactly 100 years ago. Best of all, virtually everything is free. The NYPL notes on its website that the only price of admission is curiosity. Of course, taxpayers support libraries, but the value of the investment pays off to an individual a thousand fold over, or maybe a thousand thousand fold. Unfortunately, the public library, the great leveler of a society that is increasingly made up of haves and have nots, is having less and less to work with. One of the great myths about libraries, expressed primarily by penny-pinching politicians and folks who never set foot in a library, is that the Internet is making libraries obsolete. It’s a foolish notion on par with thinking that computers can somehow replace teachers or smart librarians/Marc Johnson, The Johnson Report. More here.

Question: How often do you use the local library? For what purpose?