Children need libraries

As Al Gore described the vision in 1984, "I want a schoolchild in Carthage, Tenn., to come to school and be able to plug into the Library of Congress."

By now, though, people have begun to realize that what that Carthage schoolchild needs most is still a neighborhood public library, even if it’s a small one. When you’re ten years old, it doesn’t take a huge collection to convince you that the world holds more books than you could ever read. 

Geoffrey Nunberg, “Touched by the Turn of a Page,” in The Years of Talking Dangerously (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), Kindle ed. location 1438