What's up with our libraries?

I was a bit disturbed last weekend when I went to my hometown library to find my last book for my final project. I had decided to focus on literature depicting characters with disabilities because growing up I don't remember this being an emphasis. I do vaguely remember reading books about cultures other than my own but I had never really been exposed to issues of persons with disabilities. The school I went to had quite a few disabled students but I still don't remember exposure to this particular culture. When I was home, I went to our public library. I had a list of books that I thought would be useful for my project but for some reason I couldn't find any of them in the library catalog. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, surely I was since I hadn't been to that library in years but when I asked the librarian I got a blank stare. The response I got not only shocked me but it bothered me quite a bit. They didn't have the books I was looking for because no one read them. I decided to look at the children's section and based on the librarians response I was not surprised to find every Disney story ever made and even some of the books we identified in class as being not very good representations of multicultural literature. It was disturbing to me because this was my hometown. These were the books that students, my little sisters included had access to. It especially bothered me that there were not books depicting persons with disabilities because there were so many students with disabilities that I went to school with. I was disappointed. It makes it so difficult to try to figure out how you are going to incorporate diverse literature into a classroom when there are some libraries that don't even make that effort. I feel that libraries and teachers need to set an example. What teachers present and what libraries provide are what students have easy access to. Many parents in my town send their children to the library when they have to work or have something to do. If all students are seeing are Disney books I think we need to reevaluate how we present literature to students. I know this is only one district but how many more districts are like mine. I am not saying that the school district is bad, I received a great education which prepared me very well for college. I am disappointed in one major area. This just makes me feel as if the challenges I have ahead of me are going to be harder than I originally thought. I have always felt like progress was being made in terms of the incorporation of multicultural literature but maybe that is just what I think because I am making the effort to broaden my own experience and knowledge in the subject. Maybe things will change, hopefully, I guess it is going to take one person at a time. Everyone in class, lets have this begin with us.