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Between 1881 and 1917, industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie built over 2,500 public libraries, opening up the world of knowledge to anyone with the gumption to get a library card. Carnegie’s generosity transformed the US’s cultural and educational landscape. Today, for $2,495,000—about a hundred dollars for each one of those libraries—you can have one of those Carnegie libraries for your very own home. Such is the state of American libraries today.

Paul Clark, the "Library Guy," stood outside Florida's State Capitol for 12 hours at a stretch on many a day over a six-week period beginning in mid-March, holding laminated signs protesting the elimination of the state's Aid to Public Libraries budget. Clark did manage to score some face time with lawmakers, and at midnight on April 26, 2010, his persistence paid off. The funds, to the tune of $21.2 million, were restored. But Paul Clark was swimming against the tide.

Given the sorry state of library budgets across the US, you'd think no one went to the library any more. But the odds an adult has a library card are 1 in 1.47 (68%), and coming of age in the Internet era doesn't lower the likelihood; in fact, more young adults have cards—the odds range from 1 in 1.54 (65%) for a person 63 or older, to 1 in 1.43 (70%) for a person 18 to 31.

Not every cardholder is a reader; just 1 in 1.99 (about 50%) American adults reads literature. Then again, not every library visitor comes for books. Norman Oder, the Executive Editor of Library Journal, noted in 2009, during the worst of the Great Recession, that libraries, with their free wi-fi, desk space, and quiet atmosphere, have become the go-to place for online job searching.

And indeed libraries have morphed from musty book repositories into technology hot-spots. When residents of a New York City neighborhood suffered an Internet outage last year, the first place they called was their local library branch to see if it still had a connection. (It didn't. If it had, it probably would have seen its biggest crowd in years.)

In 2007, a new branch of the San Francisco Public Library in a newly developed residential area had lines out the door. "We're seen as a place to hang out…this is the most exciting time ever for librarians," said city Librarian Luis Herrera. Yet just two years later, with the economy seriously soured, cities across the nation were swinging the budget axe at their libraries. And the bloodletting is continuing into the new decade.

• Boston may be one of the nation's intellectual capitals, but its Public Library is planning to close four of 26 branches in the face of a $3 million funding gap. Services and programs at the famous Central Branch, with its McKim architecture and Puvis de Chavannes murals, will be cut as well.

• The Philadelphia library system recently cut 115 staffers. The odds an employed person 16 or older in Pennsylvania is a librarian (like Paul Clark) are 1 in 887.3; a library technician, 1 in 1,259; a clerical library assistant, 1 in 1,099.

• Pittsburgh, home of the original Carnegie Library system founded in 1885 by Andrew Carnegie, recently proposed closing four of its branches and reducing operating hours and staff at the remaining locations.

• A $6 million budget cut is forcing reductions in service at two-thirds of the New York Public Library’s locations.

• Charlotte, North Carolina plans to lay off 148 library workers and close 12 branches.

• Smaller cities and towns are struggling, too: the municipal budget of Troy, Michigan, population about 80,000, calls for closing the town's library by 2012. The 13,000 or so residents of Cedar Grove, New Jersey may lose their library. And the list goes on.

Down near Tallahassee, where he works as a systems librarian, Paul Clark can rest easy for awhile. But in many other states, cities, and towns across the country, libraries remain under siege, or have already lost the battle. As for Andrew Carnegie, he might be forgiven for quietly turning in his grave.