Southern California libraries spared damages from torrential rains of Christmas 2010 By William Jiang, MLS

The rains that hit Southern California in the week of Christmas 2010 and traveled across the country to dump over a foot of snow on New York City have done little damage to the libraries of Southern California. There are reports of tens of thousands of dollars of damage across Southern California, widespread flooding, and mudslides, however when I talked to a representative from the Southern California Library Cooperative she said that she had not heard of a single library that was closed by the storm. This is great news for the Latino community of South California. According to the 2010 census Latinos are the largest ethnic group in Southern California at almost 41% of the population followed by slightly under 40% of Caucasian and about 10% Asian-American and about 7% African-American. the fact that the Latino community depends upon the libraries of Southern California is evident in studies of usage among the Latino communities across the United States. Happy new year! This is some good news to end 2010.