In the mid-1950s, with ameri-cans spending less on books and more on radios and televisions, the American Library Association (ALA) assisted in the launch of National Library Week, an effort to help bolster reading. How ironic is it that in 2008, ALA used National Library Week to launch an initiative it calls "Gaming @ Your Library"?rnGaming, of course, refers to the introduction of video games into public libraries both as items to check out and the focus of library programming. Far from dreading a culture that increasingly lacks an appreciation for reading, ALA now appears not only to embrace such a culture but desires to further the cause. But have public libraries been correct to if not completely abandon, then certainly modify the original vision of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie, who saw public libraries as temples of education for the masses?
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