Hey, all you bloggers out there, be careful when you're tempted to get creative with well-known apothegms. On this story about next month's closing of two Hammond library branches, they put this headline:
The Library in the Coal Mine?
There was no other reference to that metaphor in the story, so we're obviously supposed to remember the miners who sent canaries into coal mines to test the air quality -- if the bird died, the miners probably would. But the story here is about the fact that maybe there will be other library closings, and perhaps the state didn't forsee the consequences for local governments of the tax changes it made. The implication of the headline is that -- what? -- libraries are a test . . . oh, never mind. It makes no sense at all?
How many libraries should there be per population, by the way? Fort Wayne has a population of just over 250,000, and we have a main library and nine branches, which works out to one library per 25,000 people. Hammond has a population of about 80,000, so its main library and two branches gives that city one library per 26,667, roughly similar to us. With the two branches gone, they'd just have one for all 80,000.
Not asking because I think there's a "right" answer. Just curious.
