Library Legislative Breakfast Season Begins

Friday morning, January 11, 2013, over 70 library advocates and legislators met at the stunning new Nahman-Watson Library at Greenfield Community College (GCC) to promote library funding and discuss legislative strategies and options.  Colrain library user Cynthia McLaughlin eloquently explained how important her library is to her and her family and how crucial access to network resources and electronic data bases is to their educational and informational needs.  As an addition to his comments, Student trustee (of GCC) Michael Lewis offered a very poignant and illustrative poem on the value and comfort of a student’s library.

Our legislators Senator Stan Rosenberg, Representatives Steve Kulik and Paul Mark as well as aides Brian Eno (Andrews), Dana Muller (Scibak), Rebecca Fricke (Story), Paul Dunphy (Kulik), and Diana Szynal (Kocot) offered strategic as well as tactical advice and listened carefully to our library issues.   

Their most critical advice:  contact your friends, relatives and colleagues living in eastern Mass. communities and encourage them to contact their legislators.  Western Mass Legislators are on board with library issues.  They, like us, need more support from the more heavily populated Eastern portions of the Commonwealth to influence priorities for funding.  Also, keep the Governor in  your communications loop.

If you did not attend the GCC breakfast, there are several more on the schedule (the next are 1/25/13 Canderas – Wilbraham and Downing – Great Barrington).  Sign up and support your library.  For a full schedule of western Massachusetts events, see the Advocates website.  For the statewide schedule, see the Massachusetts Library Association Website.