▶ Your Answer : Some people might say that grant of public libraries should not be reduced. However, in my opinion, the government should decline grant on public libraries during economic crisis because public libraries can be replaced by any other ways and the use of public libraries will be decreased due to economic crisis. To begin with, there are a lot of materials to read books. These days, we dont' have to go to the library because we can read books using computers and smartphones. So library is not necessary facility during economic crisis. For example, all public libraries in the region where I am living closed for 3 months because of financial problem. Af first, people wrote down their complaints on city hall's website and even went to the city hall in person. So, my city hall provided free use of library on their website because it is more cheaper than running public libraries. Gradually, people get used to using online book library and now people think online library is more convenient than going to the public libraries. On top of that, people have to work hard to overcome their economic difficulty so they will not frequently visit public libraries than before. People work hard on weekdays and even weekends and it means there is no time to go the library. As a result, the use of public libraries will be reduced. For instance, there was a study conducted by Seoul national university whether economic difficulty could affect the use of public libraries. There were two groups monitored. A group was formed of people who had no difficulty to live. The other group was consisted of people who had difficulty to live. The people who afford to buy their meals often go to the library on weekends with their family. However, the other group usually chose to sleep on weekends. This study proves if people had a hard time to live, they can't enjoy cultural life. To sum up, the other things like schools, public transit are hard to be replaced another thing but public libraries can be used through other methods. And people don't use library frequently in economic crisis. In this regard, I strongly believe that the government don't have to spend a lot of money on retaining public libraries. |