After announcing The Second Annual Non-Denominational, Completely Secular Philebrity Xmas Pageant yesterday, we’re pleased to announce that we’re partnering with the Friends of the Free Library’s $10 Challenge. The $10 Challenge is part of a two-pronged public/private solution the Friends are putting together, which executive director Amy Dougherty detailed in a speech at Haddington Library a few days ago:

[...] we are going to provide citizens with the opportunity to share, sacrifice and support the system that sustains them. The first of our two-part way forward to fund the library system plan is the $10 Challenge. We are calling on Philadelphians and others to donate just $10 to go directly towards keeping all 54 branch libraries doors open. You can donate your $10 or more on FFL’s website: www.libraryfriends.info and press donate key. For the 50% of us who do not have computer access, please go to your library and if you need help ask your librarian for assistance. 100% of your donations will go directly to increasing the library’s budget so all branches can remain open. In the coming weeks I will be reaching out to the areas supermarkets and chain convenience stores to ask them to place the $10 Challenge donation boxes in their stores. I feel sure that the generosity of Phila. will help fill the coffers quickly as a stop-gap measure while we move forward with part two of the plan.

Part two is The Committee for Learning; a summit to develop a 5 year strategy for building a strong library system. We call on the leaders of the private sector to come together and donate your talent and resources to help us solve the immediate financial crisis and to also develop a credible 5 year plan for the future. I will be sending letters of invitation to a luncheon on December 10th to the regions university and college presidents, CEO’s of large private companies and banks, to civil leaders and other private enterprises, directors of large foundations, Mayor Nutter and members of his administration and library Director Siobhan Reardon, to join with us in the first of a series of discussions. Anyone of the city’s civic and business leaders who would like to take part in this summit are invited to contact me at 215-567-4562 or through FFL’s web-site.

We’re happy to announce that all monies raised through the pageant this year will go directly to the $10 Challenge, and that starting today, we’ll also be running ads that link directly to the Friends’ $10 pledge page. Please, as we approach this season of giving, wing a tenner the Friends’ way, and tell a friend. Please also feel free to grab our graphic above and put it on your blog or social networking page of choice. Just make sure to link to http://www.libraryfriends.info. After the jump, the complete text of Dougherty’s speech on Monday.

Friends of the Free Library Press Conference
November 17, 2008 12 p.m.
Haddington Library 446 N. 65th St. Phila. PA 19151

Thank you all for coming today to join with me in front of the Haddington branch of the Free Library of Phila; one of the most elegant of the remaining 18 library branches in our city built with money from one of America’s great Industrialist turned Philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was responsible for realizing Ben Franklin’s ideal of the Free Library as a place where all citizens, rich or poor could find and read books at no cost. He funded public libraries in small towns and big cities, across American and in the British Isles. Carnegie felt that the entry staircases of many of his libraries symbolized a person’s elevation by learning.

It is apt that we stand here today. Phila. is in the throws of a financial tsunami that has swept across the country and world. Beginning on Dec. 15th , 11 library branches out of the 54 that make up the world class Free Library system will be shuttered, and the buildings eventually be sol. The closures include the Haddington branch and 3 other Carnegie libraries; Holmesburg on Frankford Ave in the northeast, Kingsessing on the edge of Penn’s campus, and the Logan branch situated in beautiful neighborhood park in north Phila.

I have asked you here today not simply to draw attention to the impending devaluation of one of the best library systems in the entire world, but rather; to announce FFL’s two pronged initiative of shared sacrifice that will build a coalition of support from the public and private sector to save the 54 branch library system. FFL has been supporting Philadelphia’s libraries and patrons since 1973 and we are preparing to do our part to help solve this financial crisis. We firmly believe that the Library system should not suffer a systemic change now but instead that we, the library, and the city need time to consider the best way forward. The Friends are going to do everything we can to create public and private partnerships to drive more funding into the Branch system with the goal being the near term rescue of the at risk Branches and the long term creation of a stable, optimal system. To do this we are inviting the hundreds of Philadelphians who have contacted me and their lawmakers in the past 2 weeks with offers to do whatever is necessary to keep our beloved library system in tact. We are inviting the philanthropic and business community, Mayor Nutter, Library Director Siobhan Reardon to join together to find a way forward to save and strengthen the library system.

Philadelphians are some of the most engaged citizens in the country-this is no sleepy, little town. When the Phillies won, we took to the street, those who were happy about the presidential election took to the streets, and I am sure there were Eagles fans were out last night poised to celebrate. And so as citizens received the news of the permanent closure of their libraries, they deluged my office and their city council members, the media with calls, emails, letters, and emergency meetings. And they took to the streets to rally, and are planning more with petitions drives, you name it. They have thought of it. When stuff happens this is what we do.

We are intensely proud and passionate and protective of our neighborhoods and what is ours and we like to let the world know all about it. In my 8 yrs. at the helm of this agency that engages neighborhoods to promote and safeguard library services, I have learned much from our Friends Groups and I can attest to this. Politics is not the only thing that is local—everything that is important is local—our stores & markets, our schools, our ball fields, our boys and girl scout troupes, our little leagues, our churches, synagogs and mosques. And our libraries, because that is where the community meets. Our librarians help our toddlers find their first easy readers and later research colleges; they know when an aging parent moves in because they help them to get connected to book clubs or learn to use a computer for the first time; they know what books and DVDs we like and what we don’t; they know when we or our spouse loses a job and needs retraining or is embarking on a job search because they are helping out. Branch libraries are ours, we perceive them as belonging to us, and in this time of financial crisis we need them more than ever. Philadelphians are crying out to help and to support in whatever way they can to save the system.

So we are going to provide citizens with the opportunity to share, sacrifice and support the system that sustains them. The first of our two-part way forward to fund the library system plan is the $10 Challenge. We are calling on Philadelphians and others to donate just $10 to go directly towards keeping all 54 branch libraries doors open. You can donate your $10 or more on FFL’s website: www.libraryfriends.info and press donate key. For the 50% of us who do not have computer access, please go to your library and if you need help ask your librarian for assistance. 100% of your donations will go directly to increasing the library’s budget so all branches can remain open. In the coming weeks I will be reaching out to the areas supermarkets and chain convenience stores to ask them to place the $10 Challenge donation boxes in their stores. I feel sure that the generosity of Phila. will help fill the coffers quickly as a stop-gap measure while we move forward with part two of the plan.

Part two is The Committee for Learning; a summit to develop a 5 year strategy for building a strong library system. We call on the leaders of the private sector to come together and donate your talent and resources to help us solve the immediate financial crisis and to also develop a credible 5 year plan for the future. I will be sending letters of invitation to a luncheon on December 10th to the regions university and college presidents, CEO’s of large private companies and banks, to civil leaders and other private enterprises, directors of large foundations, Mayor Nutter and members of his administration and library Director Siobhan Reardon, to join with us in the first of a series of discussions. Anyone of the city’s civic and business leaders who would like to take part in this summit are invited to contact me at 215-567-4562 or through FFL’s web-site.

And now, to the final piece of FFL’s new way forward plan. Mayor Michael Nutter is a long time proponent and patron of the free library system. He speaks of the day he took his daughter Olivia to sign up for her first library card and perhaps remembers his own first visit to a library. We all have cherished library memories and stories. Mayor Nutter has a 6 part visionary plan for the city, which he described to us last January, that will make our great city become even greater. Education and stable communities is a large component of his vision and I applaud him for this. But then world intervened, and like all of us, Mayor Nutter has been painfully blind-sided by the national and international financial melt-down. We understand that this represents a serious set-back to the timing of achieving his goals. I still believe he can get us there, however.

FFL would like to be part of the solution to strengthen and preserve our library system. We understand that it may take up to two years, but we are ready to roll up our sleeves, sacrifice and pitch in. And I am confident that the business sector and foundation giants located in and around Phila. will help out. After all, we are the city that donated $36 million dollars to save Thomas Eakons’ painting, The Gross Clinic. But we need time to gather the intelligence and financial resources that will generate a credible 5 year business plan to save our library system. I ask Mayor Nutter to give us 3-6 months to develop a credible long-term solution and during that time to keep our entire 54 branch library system in-tact, at a reduced schedule if necessary, but to not shutter 11 library branches so that we can jointly support the system. We appreciate the enormous challenges facing Mayor Nutter and his team and invite him to join with us as we meet together to solve this crisis. I believe that by pulling together, we can all win together.

And now, before I turn the podium over to Councilman Bill Green, I want to end with a quote from Andrew Carnegie:

“It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good boys and girls who have good within them, and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 12:58 pm.