So many home-schooling families, including ours, consider public schools a waste of time, money, and an overall detriment to children. Public libraries featured prominently in supplying the quality material our children devoured with enthusiasm during their years at home. They had contests e.g. poetry and short story writing the children could enter and always had multiple events on the go to pique their interest. From Yukon Territory to the Middle and Far East, public libraries have served our family well. In the ‘Old World’ monastaries have fabulous libraries containing works of theologians and philosophers dating back thousands of years. Personally, I question the intelligence of anyone who would do away with public or private libraries. We may not have learned how not to repeat the less than desirable aspects of history, but written lessons from the past allow us to stand upon the shoulders of others and have the choice of making different decisions because we can learn from the misteps and mistakes of others.
Without libraries we would be doomed to having ro reinvent the wheel in so many ways, it’s unthinkable to willfully deny future generations the benefit of the wisdom of those who came before us.
Our libraries are always pretty busy, they also have free wifi as well as computers. I get books on CD to listen to on my commute, so I’m there once a week at least. I don’t often borrow books, I’m a buyer, but I have and likely will again.
How on Earth is the free market not providing many of the functions that public libraries are doing, for free? What is Wikipedia other than a free alternative to commercial encyclopedias? Wikipedia exists within the free market, the government doesn’t fund it! Similarly for Project Gutenberg and other similar initiatives, as well as stuff like MIT courseware.
Right now, the public library system in my town is completely and utterly shit. The local branches have the most asinine opening times that make it completely impossible for anybody holding down a job to attend. This kind of invalidates any argument that “everybody has access to the library” when only those who are unemployed can gain access.
Further, the books they stock are complete trash—the whole thing is set up for the lowest common denominator. To get access to any sort of decent book you either have to buy it yourself or wait a week for an intralibrary loan to come through. A week! What is this, 1860? The arrival of the Internet made waiting a week for information untenable.
The fact of the matter is, the Internet is taking over many of the roles of the library, and there will be a point in the near future where libraries as they exist today are defunct. Why should we ever imagine that Victorian institutions would remain relevant in a world where you can have the sum of the world’s knowledge beamed into your living room in an instant?
And Zebrashasha I’ve got to ask, what studies claim to show most people hear all their stories from TV? Haven’t you ever been around workmen—you’ll hear more stories from them than you could ever hear from TV!
No offence, but that’s bullshit. My local library has a load of Playstation consoles. Taxpayer subsidized game playing is precisely what is happening in a lot of local libraries.
Why is it bullshit? Is Internet access one price and access to nick.com, cartoonnetwork.com and pogo.com a separate charge? I was unaware that the Internet worked that way. I guess I better go turn in my librarian card.
What you’re talking about (console games in libraries) is something totally different from kids using the Internet computers to visit sites that feature Flash games. For the record, I’m hugely in favor of console games in libraries, because games are just another medium and saying that any book is somehow better than any game is ridiculous. Plus, gaming in the library promotes the library’s services (all of the library’s services) to the next generation of library users.
And I’m very sorry to hear that your library blows, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Internet is wholly unequipped to replace libraries anytime soon.
Isn’t that balanced out by out of towners not being able to check out books?
Anyway It’s a trade off really. You get to go read books and use most of it’s services in any public library, in return you let people from other districts have access to your library. Why isn’t that equatable?
Another important aspect of libraries that I think hasn’t been mentioned here is that a public library is a physical space that is open to everyone. As long as you don’t behave in a disruptive manner the library is happy to let you come in and have a seat. It doesn’t matter if you’re a child or if you’re elderly, if you’re rich or poor or even homeless, or even if you know how to read. The library is one of the few indoor public spaces left, one of the only places a person can go aside from their home or workplace without being expected to buy something or move along quickly.
I am a librarian but not a public librarian so I’m not speaking from direct experience here, but what they taught us in library school was that the days of American public libraries being “fully paid for by taxes” are long past. (“That was before Reagan” were I believe the exact words.) Taxes cover part of library expenses, with the rest being made up of grant money and donations. I have heard that many public library directors spent up to half their time pursuing grants. Maybe some of the public librarians in this thread can say more about that.
It is obviously incorrect to say that nobody’s checking out books. Last year, at this library system according to the annual report, 6,043,688 items were checked out. That’s for the entire county, which has roughly 350,000 people. So SOMEBODY is checking stuff out.
That’s totally ignoring “libraries are the universities of the poor”, even.
ETAA - and we don’t even have enough DVDs to make that number. Trust me - people are reading our books. Stealing em too!
If this is true, that means the patron standing next to you lives in a town that is part of your regional library system. You’re just as free to go to their town and use their library even though you don’t pay taxes to that town.
While it’s true public libraries aren’t fully funded by taxes, the vast majority of money comes from tax money. Grants and donations are considered when making the budget for the year, but libraries don’t need them to provide an adequate level of service. It’s when you want extra stuff (like an extensive book/DVD/music collection as opposed to a small one or a summer reading club or programs or video game or etc etc etc) that grants and donations come into play.
That’s like saying money spent on beer is spent on food.
At any rate, this is just a value judgment and there are no right or wrong answers. My preference is that I would rather spend that money on something else more important.
If your local library is shitty, lobby for a better one! I don’t see ANY PlayStations in my area! Get the word out-start a campaign for a better library system, if that’s the case!
And just because YOUR library sucks doesn’t mean everyone elses’ does. Mine certainly doesn’t. If you tried to enact the plan advocated by the OP, or IdahoMauleMan in my area, I can’t even imagine how huge the negative response to THAT idea would be!
Anyone else having to slow down in the reading of the thread because “librarian” and “libertarian” look so similar but are polar opposites in this context?
Preference is fine. Reality? completely different. What irks libertarians is the lack of individual control in their lives, especially monetarily - at least that’s what irks the libertarian part of me. I’m sure you would prefer to have a 200 page tax filing that just has millions of boxes and you check the ones you want your money to go towards but that’s an impossibility. We live in a large nation, and that brand of direct voice is thousands of years obsolete. We live in a representative democracy and our elected officials operate in our stead. If they want to pump thousands of dollars into missile research, and then tack on another $27 more towards libraries then their prerogative. if you don’t like it, then by all means raise the issue (SPECIAL INTERESTS) and see if it passes.
and to vox, or whoever earlier bashing special interests- special interests runs this country. look around and you’ll see mostly a nation of apathetic citizens who could really not care one way or another on many issues. However, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are a billion-dollar industries and so are anti-alcohol, tobacco, and firearms nonprofits. Every legitimate issue is being raised by one person who’s all worked up, and then the less worked up populous votes for a guy that went to law school to act on their behalf in response to that person all worked up. That’s how politics works in this country, and if you’re not happy about it, take it out on someone other than librarians.
It was one example. You cannot seriously be claiming that the Internet doesn’t provide myriad sources of quality free information, on a range of subjects so huge that most libraries cannot hope to compete?
The Internet provides myriad services that libraries once performed. It is still nowhere near providing all of them (after all, as pointed out by Justin Bailey, just look at the archetypal service provided by libraries: the ability to read the book of one’s choice, something one cannot generally do on the current Internet). Someday, almost every service currently provided by a library will be provided to most by the Internet. That day will be awesome (though libraries or their descendants may still exist to provide other services). But it is a far way off.
Are you under the impression that the free online sources you can get are, in aggregate, as good as the millions of peer reviewed articles in the databases your library probably subscribes to? And of which you are probably ignorant?
OK, now show me how you can do it all for $29 a year. And remember, you have to come up with something that provides unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of books, movies, music CDs, reference databases, etc, etc, etc.
You must be mistaking me for someone else. You are arguing things I never said.
All I am saying is that I understand why someone would vote for a candidate who proposed reducing, not eliminating, the budget for public libraries. I just do not consider providing internet games to anyone should be done at taxpayer expense, much less in lean times. And this is at the county level so I have no idea what missile research has to do with anything. You seem confused.