Emperor Rahmulus could learn from land of Oak Park

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Paul Sassone

Updated: February 8, 2012 3:27PM

It’s an ordinary day at the Oak Park Main Library:

Friends chat near the entrance.

Inside, others browse
for that new best seller.

Students pound computer keys hoping to finish that assignment for class tomorrow.

An unemployed man hesitantly pecks at a computer’s keys. Don’t want any errors on this job application.

Another man drowses over a copy of today’s paper.

A woman listens to a Mahler symphony on earphones.

All over the library patrons are renewing their library card, checking out a movie for tonight, researching the presidency of James Garfield ...

Yes, it’s an ordinary day at the Oak Park Main Library.

But this day is Monday, a Monday morning.

If all these library users lived in Chicago neighborhoods, they would have to find some other way to use their time because the city’s branch libraries are closed on Monday mornings.

The Chicago libraries are victims of Emperor Rahmulus the First, who is using library hours as a club to beat salary concessions from city library employees.

“Do as I say and give up your pay,’’ Rahmulus proclaims.

But, that’s in Chicago.

Here in Oak Park the library uses its resources and staff for service to community residents for what I call the Four Es: education, entertainment, enlightenment and (more and more these days) employment.

In fact, while hours and branch libraries in Chicago are contracting, hours at Oak Park’s branch libraries are expanding.

Yes, the Maze and Dole branch libraries each are closed one day a week, Friday at Maze and Monday at Dole. But the direction, unlike Chicago’s, is toward being open more. The branches now are open Sundays and an extra hour in the evening, Monday through Thursday.

When announcing the expanded branch hours, Deirdre Brennan, the library’s executive director, was quoted as saying: “We know that people need us more during tough economic times ­— we see that with our increased usage.
Our careful stewardship has enabled us to add these much-needed hours.’’

Perhaps Oak Park should send an embassy to the empire to the east and (humbly) lay before Emperor Rahmulus some of those library stewardship ideas.