The continuing conservative agenda: keep them dumb and ignorant. Reminds me how an especially annoying Iowa radio right winger called libraries "welfare bookstores" once.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2004/12/28/Arts/steinbecklibraries041228.html
"SALINAS, CALIF. - The cash-strapped hometown of author John Steinbeck will close down its library system, including a branch named after the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, starting in early 2005.
......
"A large number of Salinas's 150,000 residents are poor farmworkers and immigrants who regularly visit the three branches - The John Steinbeck Library, The Cesar Chavez Library and The El Gabilan Library - for books as well as for other resources, including citizenship information, literacy courses, English-as-a-second language material, after-school programs and to access the internet."