Urban and rural poverty have been usually approached as separate and distinct problems in America, although as Earl Shorris points out in New American Blues: A Journey through Poverty to Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), much of the displacement of workers on farms and in factories springs from a common root: the introduction of new technologies. Conversely, the public library uses technology to provide access to information-bearing materials, a mission that applies equally to the rural and urban poor. The public library has always looked on the provision of lifelong learning, particularly in the humanities, as its goal, without the expectation of providing, as Shorris believes, a path out of poverty. The focus has only been on the filling of its mission of universal service.
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