Maher Calls Libraries Passé; Hettrick Begs to Differ (Poll)

Bill Maher made an ill-informed and careless remark about libraries Friday on his weekly HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher.

His response to his guest who mentioned building a library as an example of a good deed?

"We have the Internet; we don't need a library at all."

Maher followed this with a sarcastic statement.

"I don't know anybody who's gone to a library since 1998," he said.

Well, Maher would clearly be surprised to learn that nearly 56,000 of Arcadia's 58,000 residents have an card. More than 500,000 people visited the library during the fiscal year that ended June 30.

There are more statistics Mr. Maher should know.

Arcadia's library has about 200,000 books and other items, which were loaned out nearly 750,000 times last year alone. Over the summer, nearly 2,000 children participated in the library's Summer 2011 Reading Program.

But it's not all about books anymore.

The library has 59 computers available to the public, and the library's website hosted nearly 220,000 visitors last year. Volunteers spend many hours tutoring the public for free on how to use a computer and the Internet. In fact, more than 230 library volunteers spent nearly 17,000 hours last year helping the public.

This is just a snapshot of data that doesn't even begin to show the full picture of what libraries offer communities like Arcadia, and even cavalier and out-of-touch pundits like Bill Maher.

Read more by Scott Hettrick at ArcadiasBest.com.