Letter to the Editor: Underwhelming library

Dear Editor:

The much heralded reopening of the Downey City Library is very disappointing.

The bibliographic poverty of adult books is shocking. I know the Downey Rotary Club donates one book per week to the children’s library and they have been doing it for the last 30 years. So they should have at least 1,500 children’s books.

Regretfully they don’t have many adult books. I went searching for 10 books and the library had only two of them. The titles of the books I didn’t find are “The Black Swan,” “Irrational Exuberance,” “Life in Half a Second,” “Silver Spoon Kids,” “Liar’s Poker,” “Fashionable Nonsense,” “Selfish Gene” and ”The Origins of Financial Crises.” All of these books are well known and any self respecting library would have them.

To make matters worse, the Downey Library does not have the capability of borrowing books from nearby libraries. Can you believe it?

The remodeled building looks nice but a library with no books is of very little value.

I hope the powers to be also invest in books in addition to buildings and that they upgrade the library capabilities so that they can borrow books from better equipped neighboring libraries.

Jorge Montero
Downey