EDITORIAL:Help save library land

The American Library Assn.’s National Library Week starts this week, so we can’t think of a better time than now to encourage the community to find a way to help the Costa Mesa Library Foundation raise the necessary $15 million the city needs to hang on to land promised for a new 50,000-square-foot central library.

Foundation officials have informed us that they’ve got a long way to go to reach that goal. So far, the foundation has collected about $100,000, and ultimately it will cost about $50 million to build the new library. But the organization’s about to start its big push for bucks soon.

Foundation officials say it would help if city officials agree to charge developers a library impact fee. That certainly won’t cover the whole bill, since that fee would probably just generate about $500,000 in the near future, according to Councilwoman Katrina Foley. Still, it would really lend credibility to the fundraising drive, foundation leaders say.

City officials have already pledged the 2.5-acre Civic Center Park as a home for the new library, which is laudable, but they need to do more.

For some of you naysayers out there who question the relevance of libraries in this era of Google, we just have this to say: Not everyone can afford a computer and not every Costa Mesan has Web access, so libraries offer a valuable resource in that regard.

But that’s just one aspect of what libraries offer us. Librarians are educators and trained researchers. They help us find the right information that we need and they instruct our children.

Just visit your local library and you’ll see a terrific family-oriented hub of the community where the kids can listen to stories and practice their ABCs, and adults can study quietly. And that’s just an inkling of what libraries still offer us.

Take a break from your home computer one of these days, take a stroll down to the library and see for yourself.