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What Are Libraries For?

Libraries should be what they were always intended to be, what the first ones were—temples of books.
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What Are Libraries For?
People work at desks in the Rose Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library in New York City on Oct. 5, 2016. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Roger L. Simon
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Commentary

When I was a kid in New York City, the 96th Street library was a focal point of my life. Even though I was perpetually losing my library card and amassing fines for overdue books I didn’t want my parents to know about, it (as were the movie theaters on 86th) was my home away from home.

Roger L. Simon
Roger L. Simon
Author
Prize-winning author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Roger L. Simon’s latest of many books is “American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Exodus from Blue States to Red States.”