Libraries

Are wonderful things for any community to have, but in the Interwebs Era where you can get all sorts of useful information for free on your PC, you need to give people a reason to keep using them. Our central library in Los Angeles seems to have done a decent job of it over the years, by converting some areas into gallery spaces for art exhibitions and other spaces for author readings, family events, arts and crafts fairs, etc. It's a genuine multi-use facility, on other words, offering a variety of programs to appeal to people across the cultural spectrum. On the other hand, if you were feeling particularly lazy, you just turn your central library into The World's Biggest Starbuck's and call it an example of needed modernization. But you probably won't convince people to keep using the library since, well, you can find a Starbuck's on nearly every street corner.

---Vitelius