Editorial:

When Cindy Cleary was confirmed Tuesday as Glendale’s director of libraries, she made a telling statement about libraries.

“It always surprises me how little people know about libraries,” Cleary said.

They are no longer just repositories for information, she said, they are civic centers, art galleries, community meeting places and part of a city’s cultural fiber.

Libraries provide a young child with all the clues they need on how to lay the foundation for a future filled with knowledge, understanding and intelligence.

Libraries also provide a necessary outlet to bring families closer together.

The City Council on Tuesday adopted a $775.3-million budget for fiscal year 2008-09. As part of the cutbacks, libraries in Glendale will have reduced hours and staffing.

It was planned that the Chevy Chase Branch Library would be closed completely for a net savings of $26,000.

But Chevy Chase Canyon residents came together in a last-minute effort to try and keep the branch from falling victim to the budget cuts.

The residents may have succeeded, as several council members expressed strong interest in revisiting the possibility of shuttering the Chevy Chase branch.

“Your e-mails and thoughts did not go on deaf ears,” Councilman Ara Najarian said.

This is good, because closing a library branch is a devastating move in a community.

And as at least one neighbor pointed out, once it’s gone the city is unlikely to reopen it in better financial times. And losing a library is a blow against learning and culture.

In the week’s leading up to Tuesday’s council meeting, the relative lack of use of the library was mentioned as a reason for why the Chevy Chase branch would be shuttered.

About 1.1 million materials were checked out through the city’s library system in fiscal year 2006-07.

Of that total, just 6,500 books, magazines and other materials were checked out at Chevy Chase, Cleary said.

But at some point, politicians need to remove themselves from the numbers.

It is easy to get caught up in facts and figures, while missing the larger point.

Libraries, no matter how big or small, offer many positives that can’t be tabulated on a printout.

When parents introduce their children to a library, they are setting in motion a love affair between their children and knowledge.

Studies have shown that regular attendance at a library plays a major role in helping children learn how to read properly.

In this day and age, when children are bombarded with snippets of material to read and videos to watch on the computer, a library provides the tools to truly understand words.

The library, and the books it contains, offer children the opportunity to learn how to read properly.

By keeping the Chase Chase branch open, the City Council is investing in the future of the area’s children.