Methinks that you’re putting way too much faith in the worldwide web.
Computers not so much. Then the cost the phone line. All that costs money and fuck you if you don’t have it cause I got mine?
Seems pretty damn hostile and oppressive to the poor.
A day or two perhaps from Amazon UK. The only time it’s been on the order of a week’s wait is when I have to have the books shipped from the USA. It takes the same amount of time to ship a book halfway across the world as it does between two libraries in the same system.
We’re not talking about anything rare, either, or out of print, we’re talking about books aimed at a reading age above 12.
And everybody else, I acknowledge your arguments and concede that public libraries serve a purpose. I just think that there should be tighter control over what is available at libraries. Funding for games consoles, not so much.
Pretty much, yeah. Watching a movie’s a luxury. Why should everybody else subsidize your movie viewing? And, if you’re that poor, where the hell’s your DVD player and TV from? Weren’t you just pointing out the capital cost of a computer?
I’ve asked this of a few of the library haters, but no one seems to have an answer for me.
Why is any book inherently better than any movie or video game (I guess music CDs get a pass)? And where do graphic novels fall on the scale?
Modern libraries are much more than storehouses of books. They are also community centers nowadays. And if you can gather a bunch of people together to play games (and maybe check out a few books in the process), isn’t that a good thing? Nevermind the fact that if a library owns a game console, there’s a good chance (like 75%) that it was donated.
I know that’s what your link says but I have to call BS on that. There is no way in the world that can be true. Just no way in the world. My only conclusion from that cite is that the American Library Association are liars. Big time liars.
The population of the USA is about 302 million. I would bet there is no way they can support the notion that there are 200 million library cards active in the USA (and that would not even take into account that one person could hold more than one). There is no way in the world there are 200 million people in the USA who are regular users of libraries. No way.
If you read to the bottom, you’d see the survey came from Harris and was non-commisioned. The ALA is just happily reporting the happy facts.
Those numbers are also in line with what I’ve seen in my local system, so it’s very believable to me.
I do not believe it for a split second. This is a question which has a factual answer.
Indeed it does. The problem is, you aren’t offering any facts to support your gut feeling.
The Harris folks, whatever their failings may be, at least tried.
Well, I don’t know about your library, but I teach information literacy classes to school children, homeschool kids, and adults all the time. Not to mention the one on one bibliographic instruction I give people every day.
In the school district in my county, if you want to apply for a job as a freaking janitor you have to use the online application. It’s unreal, but it’s true. Most of the people I help with the computers all day are trying to apply for jobs that have extremely unreasonable technological literacy bars set over them - you want to sweep the floors but you, who have never used a computer in your life and will not need to to clean toilets, have to make your way through a positively Byzantine website that hardly even works. To apply for a job at Wal-Mart you need a password with uppercase and lowercase and two numbers, and there are FIVE VERIFICATION QUESTIONS. That’s old hat to you and me, but not to the people who don’t have any experience with it.
ETA - next month I’m giving a class At Your Local Public Library for anybody who wants to sign up on “Wikipedia - A Real Source?” I’ll be discussing when it’s a good idea to use sources like Wikipedia, how to decide what information is good information, and how to use citations along with the library’s resources to get peer reviewed information on a topic. You’re welcome to sign up, if I am At Your Local Public Library.
Those who want to discuss the question of what tax money should and should not be used for in libraries may want to check out this new thread:
There are a number of countries who follow for one reason or another Libertarian policies.
No free libraries or schools ,no pollution or environmental regulation amongst other things.
In fact little if any of the intrusive,interventionist over government that Libertarians hate.
These countries are known as the Third World.
I would like to state again that the free market doesn’t work when there is no profit incentive. Things like handing out books for free while maintaining large collections of them aren’t profitable.
If you don’t think libraries are important, you’re probably not the sort of person that uses one. Like how a guy who doesn’t drive thinks the roads are a waste of money.
And get the same unreliable information.
“Cheap” is relative.
You can’t be serious. There are so many films I can’t get at Blockbuster that I’m forced to go the library.
As for Amazon, I wanted to get a copy of A Field Guide of Snakes of California. The price started for used at $34. That’s about what I pay in taxes to support libraries. Got to the library and found it right there.
You have to take into consideration of the costs of libraries is that they are a system of sharing books that you don’t need to constantly have around. I may only need it once, but then someone else can use it after me.
C’mon, the book is almost always better than the movie. 
I love public libraries, they’re so lefty and collective. They buy a book once, and let anyone with a library card read it. If a book survives a hundred readings, that’s 99 books that didn’t have to be manufactured. How efficient is that!
Man, I’ve scammed my local library system big time over the years. When I first started reading for pleasure, in my mid 20’s, I must have borrowed (and returned unharmed) hundreds of books from the library. It was all fiction, all pure pleasure (just like a console game, only better), and I didn’t learn a damn thing. This was at no expense to myself, because I wasn’t paying council rates. I was working at the time and probably could have afforded to buy the books, but they were there for free, so how could I say no? Even better, I was doing my free reading at work, on the clock and paid by the government railways. Admittedly, I ended up with a book buying habit, and my reading interests later spread into factual areas (but it was all good lefty reactionary stuff).
In all, I’m quite proud of my efforts at sticking it to the fascist pig system, via the local public library. Hi libertarian dudes!
I may have slightly overstated the extent of my communism, but the basic facts above re: my library use, are correct. 
Because all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Even the poor and downtrodden need some entertainment/relaxation.
Once again we encounter the meme that someone poor must have ALWAYS been poor… why is it unlikely that a person poor today was once wealthy enough to purchase a TV or DVD?
It’s rather like when people dismiss my current claim of being poor because I have a nice car. Yes, I bought it before I fell on financial hard times. Come to think of it, I also bought my TV and DVD back when I had a nice income. And my computer. Because if I hadn’t bought a computer back then I’d be using the ones at the library for all my internet access. If this computer breaks/malfunctions/ceases to work I can NOT replace it at present. Just not doable. In which case I will be using the ones at the library.
Were it not for local public libraries even a child can use, I’d never have acquired a university-level education, let alone excelled in my studies.
The Internet, as it is today, is small fish compared to the information available at libraries. Sure, for porn, sports and entertainment it’s superior. But I (like many others) have special interests I can find no usable information about on the Net, or only information I’ve put there myself - talk about deflating the World Wide Web awe! Most of those special interests are tackled in books, available at my local library. Even on many less exotic topics, good books are invariably more in-depth, cohesive and useful than what’s available on the Net.
Not forgetting that the good articles are those that cite, y’know, the books you find in a library 
I just happened to use a local library the other day. I’ve been doing research what the crusader city Acre was like in the early 13th century. I found a few snippits online, but took home three books and a number of photocopies from the library. The amount of information isn’t comparable. The library had *much *more.
Online searches are a good way to start your research, but unless it’s about something very common there is no way it substitutes for a large library.