On Monday Night’s “Nailed ‘Em” segment, Stephen Colbert brought to light the story of Dominick Philip, a young boy from Pennsylvania who lost his library card because he didn’t live in the library district. Lehighvalleylive.com reports a (somewhat) happy income for Philip:
Tatamy boy can use Nazareth library card till end of 2009 — UPDATE
by Bill Wichert
Monday June 22, 2009, 2:48 PMCredit: Express-Times Photo | BILL ADAMS
A 7-year-old Tatamy boy who was told last week that his Nazareth library card was invalid now can use the card until the end of the year.
Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, director of the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity, said today that Dominick Philip would be permitted to use the card through year’s end.
“We’re completely OK with what’s going on here,” Snodgrass-Pilla said in a telephone interview.
Snodgrass-Pilla hung up before providing additional information about the recent situation surrounding the boy’s library card.
In case you missed it, you can check it out here.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Nailed ‘Em – Library Crime | ||||
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Tip of the hat to the library for allowing Dominick to use his card through the end of the year…wag of my finger, though, for revoking it at the end of it. Really? He’s just a kid. It’s hard enough to get kids his age to read, but when you find one who loves nothing more than reading, you go and do something like this to try and stifle it? Not cool, library people, not cool.
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From what I understand, the biggest wag of the finger should go to the Tatamy town council for refusing to contribute to the library system in the first place. I still don’t understand why the Nazareth library can’t charge non-residents for a library card, though.
What a cutie! Those ginormous eyes :)
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That’s nice that he gets to use the card again, but…why only until the end of the year?! I don’t think he’ll only be curious/interested in reading until the end of the year. This seems so silly to me because we’re always trying to get kids excited about reading and then someone takes away the library card of an enthusiastic little boy because of a district difference? It makes me angry!
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Yay! The kid gets his card back, that’s awesome.
The fact that he get it only until thr end of the year is stupid, what is he gonna automatically stop liking to read on Dec. 31? That makes no sense.
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I work as a library assistant and we also have neighboring communities that do not contribute towards any library (I’m looking at you, Inverness, IL). However, those residents can pay a fee to use the library in our town. It’s pretty steep, though, around $400 a year (which is what taxpayers pay to support the library). I say that we all chip in and pay the fee for this little kid so he can continue using the library. Who’s with me?
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I work for two libraries in the same county. I understand this kid’s plight, but I also understand the realities of the situation. Cities who opt out of the library district unfortunately take away the rights of their citizens to have a ‘free’ library (I mean ‘free’ as in, they don’t have to up-front pay cash to the library in order to get a card – it’s all in their property taxes). Some cities do this intentionally or accidentally (both are the case for a couple cities that fully or partially lie within our county boundaries). I think their time would be much better spent talking to their city representatives than fighting the library. We are flat-out not allowed to give people in certain cities library cards unless they pay an annual fee ($95) per card per year. That’s how much, on average, they’d pay in property taxes a year for the library. If we were lenient on the rules for one kid just because he loves books so much, we’d have to do that for everyone else, too. It’s a crappy situation, but there’s nothing we can really do about it. We don’t like that we have to ask people to pay $95 in one go, but… that’s just how it goes. (In this situation, though, I like to remind our patrons/members that $95 is still nothing compared to how much they’d be paying if they were purchasing these items – $95 these days would buy, what… 5-6 books? 8-10 DVDs or CDs?)
One of the cities mentioned above has a tiny portion of their city within our limits. They’re the ones who accidentally opted out of the district. They’re putting it up to vote on the November ballot, thankfully. Another city, unfortunately, their representatives purposely opted out. Needless to say, a lot of their citizens are quite upset about it. All we can really do is encourage them to contact these people and try to get something changed. Rudely complaining at us at the library–even though we completely sympathise–is wasted energy, really. We. Can’t. Do. Anything. :l
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Only $95? That’s pretty good, actually. Ours is LITERALLY $400, but then again I live in a suburb of Chicago (a part of Cook County) and our taxes are used to… oh hell, I have no idea what our taxes are used for.
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Yeah, just $95. We’re suburbs of Portland, OR. It had been $75 for ages because they never re-figured the current cost, but with the new District Measure that passed last year, they re-evaluated it finally.
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I love that Colbert Fans–and in this case,Zoners–are so generous they immediately think of how to help out others! The host of the Report may be an egotistical blowhard, but the man who portrays him is the real inspiration for these random acts of kindness! How else would we know about the unfortunate library rules, donors choose.org, USO, feeding america, etc. and be so moved/encouraged to donate?!
I wonder if there is a study regarding the giving nature of the Colbert Nation? :)
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Talk about the Colbert bump.
(Captcha: meany registra-)
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I live near Nazareth, so I’ve been familiar with this situation. The borough of Tatamy has been asked and asked, if not begged, to join the library, but they just won’t. Nazareth used to let Tatamy residents pay for a nonresident card, but they stopped because Tatamy was using that system as a crutch to avoid paying their actual fair share. What Tatamy advocates is a fee-based system for the library, as if the library is the same as a public pool or public golf course.
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