Thanks to Sitka Library
Dear Editor: Sentinel news stories on Tuesday and Wednesday mentioned the efforts of the Sitka Public Library staff to assist residents coping with the problems caused by the recent breakdown of communications. As a longtime fan of the Sentinel, I encourage you to further explore the important role our library and library staff have played in this disaster.
From the first confused minutes of the communications failure our librarians began analyzing the problem and helping residents. Without outside direction they were quick to make their meager online service available to residents. The professionalism of our librarians compels them to assist citizens seeking information.
From early in the morning until late at night you will find residents filling the chairs inside, huddling the outside walls, and hunched in their cars surrounding the library as they attempt to access financial records, answer urgent correspondence or contact loved ones. The library staff have voluntarily put in extra hours in their efforts to help.
We tend to look at our public libraries just as a collection of books. We fail to understand the library is a gold mine of information, being simultaneously both a warehouse of knowledge and a network hub for communicating with the larger world. With private, state and federal agencies now disdaining face-to-face contact, the citizenry is forced to go online to handle business, to find a job, pay taxes, or apply for Social Security. It is our city library staff who step in to help make these connections.
In any natural disaster our electronic communications will fail. Cell phone towers will fall, fiber-optic cables will break, and the power will go off. Time and time again across this country it is the local library that functions as the most convenient community resource accessible to residents coping with widespread communications failure.
Was our public library appropriately funded, equipped and staffed to adequately respond to this disaster? Has our library been given the resources needed to make our community more resilient during other future disasters? I think there is a story here.
Bruce Gazaway, Sitka
Living Without Internet
Dear Editor: I really hope that we Sitkans are settling in, not stuck with, the internet interruption. Although it created a lot of inconveniences that revealed our dependence on the internet to carry on businesses as well as to communicate with each other and to just be connected with the rest of the world, but I also see it as an opportunity for great things too, such as:
1) To be grateful for the many blessings that we still have. Let’s sit and list them.
2) To be better prepared if unfortunate events took place in our lives, and how much we are able to handle stresses without getting distressed.
3) To take a break from screen time, and to actually discover the benefits of less daily screen that sometimes deprive our children from adequate sleep.
4) To seek and practice the good within us, such as knocking at our neighbors’ doors, or to go for a walk along the beach, to spend more time with our families and friends, or to visit older friends at the Pioneers Home, to just read a good book or to offer helping hands or even to share your Star-link access. Just to list a few!
I am sure Sitkans are (writing) great stories everyday out of this tough experience!
Paul Bahna, Sitka
