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Do We Believe in Libraries?
Just something I’ve been turning over in my head for a while. Not something I’m considering from a political angle as any change would be almost impossible politically.
On the pro side: It’s true that libraries act as subsidies, but they do so in the most benign way possible. The only people who can take advantage of the subsidized education merit it by their hard work. Furthermore, they’re the best possible people to subsidize since they’re the most likely to make good use of the resources provided. And when we get someone like that, it pays off big. And in the end, libraries aren’t all that expensive.
On the con side: How expensive are books, actually? I mean you can get all kinds of stuff cheap at a second hand store, and the poor in America can afford iPhones. The kind of kid who’s going to spend enough time in a library to be useful will get his hands on the books and succeed anyway. Saying that libraries aren’t all that expensive doesn’t help any, because most things on the book “aren’t all that expensive” when you compare them with the rest of the government’s budget. Besides, those places are hotbeds of government workers, or hadn’t you noticed?
And one more question: If we really believed in getting the information out there, why wouldn’t we make a million ebook copies of it and let anyone download it who wanted to?
So what do you think? Should we keep paying for libraries in this day and age?
Published in General
I didn’t read this before I posted. Good points. I like public libraries, but I think I like used bookstores more.
In “The Use of Circulating Libraries,” published in 1797, the author, Thomas Wilson claimed collections must contain 70% fiction. That strikes me as high, but it indicates folks did not just go to libraries for how-to manuals. (A digital version seems unavailable. You will have to go to a library for it.)
What is interesting is complaints libraries are not used right are quite old. There is an interesting paper online “The Novel-Reading Panic in 18th-Century” exploring the disapproval of those who Read Novels rather than Properly Uplifting Texts.
I doubt a public library would have items absent a demand for them. You do get a say – just as those who want movies and billboard hits have a say. The tastes of the majority of the voting public just differ from yours. Vox populi with a representative government.
Seawriter
Yep. Even video games. Our library has pretty much any media you’d be interested in. If not onsite, then at a branch library from where you can have it sent quickly.
Latest movies on DVD? Probably available from the library on release day.
As I said upthread, I gather from discussions with others that ours might be a bit of an outlier as far as public libraries go. And though it’s right across the street from a homeless shelter, I’ve never felt that it was becoming a flophouse. (Although I do know that those guys use the library quite a bit.)
It’s pretty much a community center with all sorts of programs.
You know, I’m sure you’re making excellent points, but I’m really distracted by how cool the word “upthread” is. I say this without sarcasm.
That’s how they were historically. Driven entirely by private subscription.
You can’t do it now because you get competition from the “free” government library.
The 70% fiction in Comment #32 referred to circulating libraries – which were the private subscription libraries of the day.
There still are a few private libraries left. The best known may be the Huntington.
Seawriter
It is a good library system. Recluse that I am, I’m more likely to drive to the next town and browse for the books than get them on interlibrary loan, but that also means I’ll drop them off at any of the libraries without worries. (For a while I tried kiting library fines by only returning books to a library where I didn’t have fees. Didn’t work.)
My mother does the downloaded library ebooks thing. I never have.
Those ebooks expire because publishers want them to. A normal library book suffers wear and tear and eventually has to be replaced. A text file can be replicated endlessly. So the publisher writes a contract with the library to artificially cause the books to expire so they can sell more books later. Textbook (heh) crony capitalism.
I’d love to see an online library of everything, but in addition to the transcription costs we’d have to deal with the copyright issues.
This is a really good point.
The public funding of libraries doesn’t even register on the list of problems.
I don’t mind that people do that. I mind that they want a public subsidy for entertainment. If some one wants to make a Book rental program they are welcome to it but I don’t see why it should be a public good.
People might also want to consider that the cost of media is only a fraction of what your taxes pay for. Much of the cost is salaries and benefits for the curators (I.e. librarians), maintenance personnel, circulation desk staffers, administrators, and behind-the-scenes staff. Both present AND past — if your town is like mine, it offers generous health and pension benefits. Look at your town budget; it may surprise you. (Though if your town reports benefit and retiree costs on a centralized budget line, it may be difficult to determine how much of that is for library staff.)
At one time, it made sense to have people select the good stuff and show you where you can find information. Today you can do much of that more inexpensively with the help of Internet search tools. Outside of university libraries, librarians are increasingly irrelevant.
It will not be long before libraries are just a museum were we go look at those strange thinks called books. I have almost 600 “books” on my kindle. I carry it in my pocket.
If only. There are two reasons why libraries will continue to be a magnet for tax dollars.
First is slipperiness in their “public” character. Like other “public” cultural institutions — public broadcasting, even public schools — it’s never clear whether their “public” purpose is to cater to public tastes or to meet private sector market failures. The second reason is library employees, who will do what is necessary to keep their jobs. They will shift their argument from one mandate (“we have DVDs and audiobooks the public values!”) to the other (“no one else will preserve our culture!”) as necessary to ensure libraries continue to stay open.
In the bygone days of the mid-1990s, if you wanted to look something up in an atlas or an encyclopedia, you had to go to the library. A back issue of the New York Times, ditto. An old edition of a public domain book, ditto. Today that’s all online — and free. Have library budgets fallen?
SoS , good points,but the money for everything is quickly running out.