[BHC] the fee

[Cathy Compton]

Dear List,

I, too, live outside of Detroit and use the Burton and Rare Books
collections from time to time.  It will be a huge shame if this plan goes
into effect.  I am rather sure I will not pay $100. per year just in case I
might want to do research in the Burton.   I usually give that much to the
Friends of the DPL, so maybe I'll just give the increased amount to them.

My own community of Pleasant Ridge has no library of its own and pays a
yearly fee to use a nearby library.  They solicit bids for a 5-year
contract, and will pay approximately $35,000 per year in the next five
years.   This fee is only necessary for our residents to obtain  a library
card to use for borrowing privileges.  No fee is required for access to the
libraries.  Before we had a blanket contract, about 15 years ago, we paid
about $15.00/year each for our cards at a designated library and the City
matched the amount. I seem to remember that at that time, Royal Oak charged
non-residents $25.00/year.

This brings to mind my visit to "the first public library in the world" in
Manchester, England.  Mind you, it was not a "lending" library.   I do not
know what I had expected, but after winding our way through a boys' academy,
and up through several stacks, we came to a small room with a few historic
markers and a single desk.  Chained to it were about a dozen ancient
volumes, each with its own chain about five feet long.   I was shocked.  Of
course, I had expected it to be a lending library, though I had believed the
first one of those to be in Philadelphia.   It was explained that this desk
was the first place where non-scholars could read books, but clearly, they
were not trusted to even take them to another table.

If this new fee is enacted, it will seem as if the special collections have
been chained up, and the clock  has been turned back hundreds of years, to a
time when education and even literacy itself was only possible for the rich.

Cathy Compton, Pleasant Ridge, MI