I just sent this email to all of the officials listed below. Anyone who wants to use it has my permission, just change the appropriate personal information. But PLEASE, do let them know how much we need them. Pat I am writing to you as a family genealogist with all of my paternal ancestors having resided in Pennsylvania, esp. Northampton, Berks, and Bucks, Montgomery Counties. I live in Oregon and have only been able to make one trip back there in recent years, but I spent most of my three weeks there in the Easton Public Library, Marx Room. However, there are several volunteers who will look up information for those of us who are unable to visit personally, and they use the census and newspaper film, city directories, biographies, as well as manuscripts only available in the Marx Room and not available for inter-library loan. To cut the funding to the libraries by 50% would be devastating to the whole world because with the advent of the internet, the use of your library's data is now world wide. I sincerely request that you think very carefully about how you cut. We, in Oregon, have had to face cuts also, and one possibility would be to cut the hours of operation, rather than any of the services. Another would be adding a fee to out-of-state requestors. I would be most willing to pay a reasonable fee for your library's services. Sincerely yours, Patricia L. Palmer patpalmer5@attbi.com http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/p/a/l/Patricia-L-Palmer/ All outgoing mail scanned by Norton 2002 ----- Original Message ----- From: msouders To: PANORTHA-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Friday, May 02, 2003 5:37 AM Subject: [PANORTHA-L] Library Funding I am not a Pennsylvania resident but I do use the Easton Public Library Marx Room several times a year and have come to admire and respect that collection and the people who keep it running. The past few times I've been there, the staff has been disturbed by an impending proposed budget cut for Pennsylvania library services by a whopping 50%. They requested that I write to Pennsylvania legislators to request re-thinking these drastic cuts and I did. Here is the list of legislators they suggest you contact: To: Governor@state.pa.us ; secretary@psupen.psu.edu ; lboscola@dem.pasen.gov ; rcwonderling@pasen.gov ; rfreeman@pahouse.net ; rgrucela@pahouse.net Anyone who is researching their family in Pennsylvania should be protesting these draconian cuts because it will shutter libraries, cut back on reference services and subscriptions and impact us in ways we haven't even realized. Marilyn