Amer Library Assn statement

[Ocelot II]

2. Just this morning I went to a lecture at a local branch of our very large county library

about how to find information about your house (when it was built, architects, who owned it, etc). It was fascinating to find out how much data the library had compiled about the history of the city. There's an enormous amount of information that the library had collected and put online for anyone to research - old plat maps, lot surveys, even building permit information going back to 1885 - my house is older than that but I found out it got electricity in 1906! Libraries do this sort of thing; they don't just check out books. Our big library will survive, but even the relatively minor amount of federal funding can mean a lot to the small rural libraries who need it most.