

Local Library Would Like to Remind Everyone Its Shit Is Free - mjhea0
https://medium.com/comedy-corner/3c369fb7d704

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bane
I grew up in a poor rural county with a smattering of libraries. The local
branch was a small single room building with maybe 1500-2000 books, but I
practically lived there. On occasion I'd visit the central library and just
walk among the aisles looking at all of the amazing books. I'd easily spend 7
or 8 hours there, skipping meals.

After the Internet, I (like many people) kind of stopped going, I was spending
less time reading for pleasure and more time studying and web surfing.
Libraries really struggled during this time finding a purpose. But there's
been a definite resurgence in the last few years and I, and it seems many
others, really enjoy spending time in libraries. Quite often, when I'm on a
work-from-home day, I'll just spend the day working out of the local library.
It's quiet, I can focus, the WiFi is decent for what I need to do.

I definitely take them for granted -- considering them as essential for
civilization as indoor plumbing. One of the things that has surprised me as
I've traveled around the world is how rare public free libraries are and in a
sense how at risk this puts the local public library. "If <country> doesn't
need public libraries why should <insert US state>?" is something I've heard
from time to time.

My wife grew up in a country _without_ free public libraries. They had
specialized "study libraries" you pay a monthly fee to go to, or "book loan"
libraries where you check out a stack of comic books in a series and return
them when you're done, but again you pay for this service. I don't think she
has quite the appreciation I do for the public library system, but on occasion
I can get her to go to one for isolated work and she's checked out and read a
handful of books.

Interestingly, in her home country the government, in search of global cachet,
has started building vast public city libraries, a bit like the New York
public Library. But they haven't yet turned this into a full-fledged library
system like here in the US. It's still a significant travel expense from many
places to get to one of the few free public libraries there.

But imagine the social and economic implications if kids did their after
school studies at the local free library branch then at an expensive and often
poorly run (and sometimes illegal) "study libraries" that almost every Korean
kid goes to.

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tnuc
My local library has a lot of books available that I can just download and
read on my Kindle.

Don't want to pay $9 for a kindle book you will read once, get it from the
library in 5 minutes for free. All you need is a library card.

~~~
eigenvector
I live in Toronto, where the public library system has the highest
circulation-per-capita in the North America, and even here we pay about $5.50
(in taxes) for each book borrowed from the library. Yes, it is free at the
point of use, but libraries are not cheap to operate.

~~~
bane
I'm not sure cost/book loaned is the best measure of a library's performance.

In my local area (a suburb of Washington D.C.), I have 2 brand new libraries
about 5-10 minutes from my house, with another one planned within walking
distance. At both the extant libraries, book loaning is just part of the
services offered by the library.

For example, on any given day you can go in after school and the libraries
will be packed to the gills with students using them as after school study
centers -- with private group study rooms and the like. Private tutors often
meet with their students in the library as well instead of people's houses as
it lets them have a centralized place where they can see 3 or 4 students in a
row with high efficiency.

They also offer a pretty full schedule of community events, for example one of
my county libraries has regular meet-ups for parents of autistic kids. The
kids get together and play videogames and the parents meet with a special
educator.

I've also attended talks by authors of niche books that would never get a
chance in a major book chain. One of the best I recall was a talk by a retired
player about his days as a professional baseball player in the Negro Leagues.

Libraries are more than just a cheap alternative to a book store, they're
major community centers dedicated to learning in general.

I'd happily pay $10 a book loaned to keep them around.

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bradleysmith
It took me looking for the described video for me to realize this was The
Onion.

I really wanted to see the president of a library board say they had a 'shit
ton' of books.

------
Create
[http://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-
patriot-...](http://www.propublica.org/article/remember-when-the-patriot-act-
debate-was-about-library-records)

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Legion
How long will it be before ereaders are so cheap and disposable that libraries
loan them out instead of physical books? Have to think it's not that far off,
at least before it starts happening here and there.

~~~
eurleif
This already happens at the library in the town I grew up in:
[http://brookslibraryvt.org/borrow/digital-
media](http://brookslibraryvt.org/borrow/digital-media)

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6d0debc071
Honestly, as more media is created the worth of curated collections increases
faster than the worth of the media itself. If I were in charge of libraries,
I'd be looking into that aspect of things. Because, right now, I walk into
libraries and they're just mediocre collections of books I've no interest in.

~~~
1123581321
Libraries do curate their collections, but they serve a lot of different
people and they more closely accomplish their mission by having the books 10
different kinds of people want than by having just the books one person wants.

If they seem to be falling behind on book replacement or addition, it's
probably for financial reasons. If they are woefully out of date or off base
in a particular section (computer science is common, sadly), then they could
probably use your expertise. I help pick finance books for one library.

However, public libraries ultimately expect people with particular and/or
extensive interests to be able to search the catalog and order books through
inter library loan.

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nextweek2
Like book shops libraries need to move with the times. Adding a DVD section
isn't it. That just makes them like blockbusters.

They should be local archives of local things, with content online. Plus free
Internet terminals and wifi.

~~~
ams6110
They need to do more than that. Local libraries of physical media are dead.
They need to close up and take their significant tax burden off of their
citizenry.

Pre-internet, I used to use the library quite often. I probably haven't been
inside one in 10 years now. Their time is past, they need to die.

~~~
mjhea0
How about people that do not know how to effectually search the internet to
get the social, economic, and political information to make informed decisions
in their lives?

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asperous
Even with effectively searching the internet I'd agree that with the exception
of web/computer/programming stuff, it's impossible to find on the internet the
kind of wide-variety, high-quality information the library has in such a
distilled form.

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jupiterjaz
Local library business hours are terrible.

~~~
adestefan
Here they're 10A - 9P M-Th, 10A - 6P FSa, and 12P - 5P Sunday.

Pretty respectable hours if you ask me.

~~~
RogerL
Ours are closed Sunday and Monday, close at 6 on fri/sat, and open at 1pm on
Tue. For me it's pretty hard to get to the library sometimes, but I suspect
the hours work well for the people that need in-library time the most (school
children, retired, and out of work). I'd prefer to pay the taxes for
additional access, though. Nothing better than spending a rainy Sunday
afternoon in the library (not that we hardly ever have one here in CA)

