cobb county's evil sense of humour

National Library Week starts on April 10. This makes the timing of the shocking blow to the Cobb County Library System (CCPL) proposed in the budget for the County of Cobb in Georgia rather unfortunate. In brief: 13 of the 17 CCPL branches will be shut down indefinitely. If you are a resident of Cobb County and care about the library system, please consider getting the word out, joining the community set up on Facebook, sending an email supporting the libraries to BudgetComments@cobbcounty.org or even attending the Cobb County Board of Commissioners Meeting on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 9 a.m. in the BOC Room, 2nd Floor, 100 Cherokee St., Marietta. You can even send an email to the commissioner of your district; the email addresses are available on this page hosted by the Save Cobb Libraries community on Facebook.

PS: For what it's worth, you're living in a county that (a) deems it financially sound to add faux brick linings on Akers Mill Road (b) proposes trimming firefighting and emergency services (c) runs a crippled limited bus service that does not run on Sunday (and also faces cuts for the 2011 budget).

april 12, 2011: The BOC meeting ended today morning and the libraries will stay. You could look at this as a victory for all those patrons of the libraries, who made their support known or wonder if the governing entities of the county were merely emulating what their cousins on Capitol Hill did last week with the scare of a government shutdown. In any event, venture forth to your friendly neighbourhood library and greet the relieved staff with your biggest smile and check out a few books, a movie or two or just flip through the newspapers or magazines. Don't forget, it's National Library Week.