In 2005, the year of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) representative in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, said plainly, “Libraries are not essential services.” And yet all evidence pointed to the contrary. One survey found that in the months following the hurricanes half of all respondents and 40 percent of people interviewed used libraries in New Orleans for reasons including Internet access, information and technology assistance, mental escape, and refuge.9 Participants also discussed how the destruction of libraries added to their sense of loss, and the
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