Who needs knowledge anyway?

Ontario's government decided to balance its budget by slashing library funding:

About $1.2 million has been cut by the Ministry of Culture from public library services, including the inter-library loan system...

Kathryn Goodhue, chair of the Administrators of Rural/Urban Public Libraries of Ontario, which represents 16 rural and remote libraries, said its members will suffer the most.

"We rely heavily on our ability to be able to borrow books from other library systems across the province," she said.

The beauty of a library system is that it enables anybody to have access to virtually any information. Cutting down on inter-library loans eliminates much of that ability. At rural libraries in particular, an individual's ability to get access to a book will be entirely dependent on that library's purchasing choices. In turn, those purchasing choices are limited by both the small audience and a small budget - likely leading the libraries to stick to well-known books rather than providing any base for specialized knowledge.

But isn't that knowledge also often available on the Internet? Sometimes yes, sometimes no - but either way that too is becoming less accessible, since $340,000 is being slashed from the computer budget for libraries.

At best this sort of decision is short-sighted; at worst it reflects complete contempt for the needs of rural areas in particular, and the value of information in general.