To the editor:

After reading the Journal-World story (Feb. 26) about the Lawrence Public Library, by far my favorite city building, I went down to the library and asked a librarian for help in finding a VCR tape whose title escapes me but that I remember finding on the shelves a couple of years earlier. I first found the video browsing the shelves several years before that and when I went in the second time, a helpful librarian was able to point me to the right section of the shelves.

Not this time.

All tapes have been removed from the shelves. Why is that?

“Well,” the librarian said, “we have to make room on the shelves for new items that come in.”

What happened to the tapes?

“They were sold at the library sale.”

This was a tape by a German film director showing his personal collection of optical illusions and magic lanterns and other light devices all leading up to the invention of cinema. I remember a microdot dating from the American Civil War placed in the bottom of a white porcelain cup. When a little water was poured into the cup, it acted like a lens — and presto! — there was a naked lady in the bottom of the cup. Other wonderful tapes are gone, too, like the naked lady. All gone.

I don’t mind VCRs going the way of the eight-track. What I mind is the city is unwilling to fund library expansion.

Craig Voorhees,
Lawrence