In general, the ferocity of the rant is inverse to the willingness to give or sign a name.

So it was no surprise that the two people who blistered me most for my recent take on the city's public libraries didn't identify themselves.

Before I get to one of those rants, let me be clearer than I was in Sunday's column about how I feel about the director of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh having a Duquesne Club membership.

I don't care. I'm not sure the level of my disinterest could be quantified. It might take a computational ordeal not seen since the great German mathematician Johannes Kepler, whose name is etched into the wall of the main branch in Oakland, stopped counting forever in 1630.

That said, if I were on the library board, I'd vote to spring for the $3,720 annual membership. Because if you want to raise millions of dollars in Pittsburgh, you eventually find your way to the Duquesne Club. The reason is the same that Willie Sutton was said to have given when asked why he robbed banks:

Because that's where the money is.

A bad analogy? Perhaps, but the library's capital campaign has raised $29 million from foundations, corporations and individuals since 2000, most of that in just the past few years.

You don't find that kind of money at Weiner World.

We might ask how such a successful campaign can possibly translate into closing branch libraries, but the question of the club membership itself? Keep it or cut it, that's still a side show.

That's not how my ranters see it, of course.

"Boy, you guys really don't get it," said a female voice on my answering machine. "There's no reason a library director has to be sent to India or China using local funds. There's no reason on Earth for that. And the woman who runs that organization -- what a snake. I don't think she needs a Duquesne Club membership either.

"It seems like good journalism just doesn't exist anymore."

She was referring to the column in which I showed that surrounding municipalities, though much smaller than Pittsburgh, contribute far more to their libraries than does the city. Pittsburgh contributes $40,000, the same amount it gave in 1895.

As a reader from McCandless has since pointed out, his township's annual contribution of roughly $550,000 to the Northland Public Library works out to about $19 per resident. Do the math for the average city resident's contribution to the Carnegie and it comes to 13 cents.

Our city's library system is worth more than that. Period. All this other stuff is diversionary, however entertaining the questions might be.

The travel? Barbara Mistick, director and president of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, has been invited to give the keynote address next month at the International Conference in China for Yunnan Provincial Library's 100th anniversary. That conference, not the library system, is paying her travel expenses, according to a Carnegie spokeswoman.

Asian librarians must dig that Carnegie imprimatur. Dr. Mistick also attended an international conference on digitization in India last October, which resulted from Carnegie Mellon University's successful effort to digitize a million books in many languages and make them available on the Internet. The library paid 20 percent of that trip's cost, with CMU and other grantors picking up the rest, the Carnegie spokeswoman said. The library won't say how much that 20 percent cost.

Certainly, that cost is one of the figures the special audit by the Regional Asset District board should obtain, even if that does stray from the central question: Why does the city give pennies for its libraries when other communities give dollars?

As for the Duquesne Club membership, well, I'm not sure why people think that's a great perk for Dr. Mistick.

I've been through the club's storied doors only about a half-dozen times in my two decades in town, the last time when I spoke to the Pittsburgh Stock and Bond Club a number of years ago, and I went over like a Browns jersey at a Steelers practice.

Actually, it wasn't that bad. The guys were very nice once I stopped speechifying. And I did get to visit the Duquesne Club's black marble urinals again. Nothing says "you're rich" quite like standing before black marble urinals.

In that sense, I guess the membership is wasted on Dr. Mistick.