I can’t say enough good things about public libraries. At the MIT Media Lab we started an innovation exchange with US libraries to co-develop new STEAM education programs together (tinkering with electronics, building a “food computer”, using data to tell stories...). We found that libraries are wonderful collaborators. They are also one of the last places where people from all walks of life encounter each other in a friendly environment. More info about the project is at https://PLIX.media.mit.edu (and I hope this post doesn’t seem too self-promotional - I just want to share our excitement about working with public libraries).
Sigh...not a big fan of "STEAM" as opposed to "STEM". STEM exists because science, technology, engineering, and math don't get the focus they need in the standard US education system. There is also the arts of music, and drawing/painting/crafts, P.E., History, Literature that are still important, but take the focus away.
If you say...well STEM is important, but let's not forget art, pretty soon you'll say well we also need physical education as a healthy body is good too. Before long, you're back at the standard education system.
Getting back to the main subject at hand, libraries are awesome and will be even more important when Amazon forces the last brick and mortar bookstores out of existence. I've also started to see library outreach programs that teach classes on various subjects. Neil Gaiman has an essay on libraries in his book "a view from the cheap seats" that you can also see here:
As to the comment I'm responding to, you can probably mostly ignore my STEM vs STEAM argument as it is only mildly important as far as how funds are distributed. What really matters is people like you who are working to make a difference in the world and thank you for that. To think that I might get to bring my children to a library in the future that acts as a knowledge hub is pretty amazing. I've also found the librarians at my local library to be very kind & helpful people.
> STEM exists because science, technology, engineering, and math don't get the focus they need in the standard US education system.
Pretty much every HS kid in America is required to take at least 3 full years of math and science if not 4. How exactly are they not getting the focus over art? Schools are cutting art programs left and right in order to allocate more resources toward things that get covered on standardized tests.
Probably because taking 1 Math and 1 science a year is not nearly enough in the modern economy.
I went to a really good high school and took all AP courses and was still blown away in college by those who came from schools with strong STEM programs. When I was struggling with robotics, programming, circuits, CAD work (small portion of the freshman engineering curriculum) they had very little trouble. Why? They had 4 years of engineering classes in high school which covered those subjects. They got to substitute many of their other classes out (classes which I would say are valuable, but less valuable). That is the value of STEM. When I was struggling freshman year i would have gladly traded my art, Spanish, physical education...etc classes for classes which would have better prepared me. I ended up graduating on time with a pretty good GPA, but it was more work than it had to be.
Every single year/quarter of a person's basic education includes math and science (physics and then biology and chemistry, then a bit of cs) where I am from. Thus, worst case scenario a person has spent 9 years on that stuff (among other topics sure).
Sure I can see art does not get a lot of focus from what you are saying and I do not have experience in your system to say what the balance kept. But I can see if a school is running under budget and needs to reduce something that art/music is the first to go. Pity.
"High school" is the universally-accepted term in the US, and means four years before university. "Junior" high school is not a universal term, though exists in some areas. "Senior high school" is a term I've never heard before, appears uncited on that wikipedia page, and were I to say it to anyone I know they would look at me funny.
Also, prior to high school, kids are usually taking math and science classes at all times, so the absolute maximum would be one year without math and science.
I think partly another comment and partly misreading yours lol, sorry about that.
It is a pity that we can't all be perfectly rounded for sure.
In the future, it'd be nice if you Kahn Academy everything starting in highschool and choose out of hundreds of courses on interest for the few electives you have.
Speaking as a foreigner who asked many Americans what kind of math and physics they learn in school, you guys aren't doing anywhere near enough of both if you want to stay competitive. I've met college students who don't know what was middle school math for us - and not because they forgot.
Frankly I think there are a lot bigger problems in the US schooling system that what are balance of ceramics:chemistry should be. (Besides, the chemistry teacher let me borrow lithium salts to spice up my ceramics glaze)
FWIW my art classes were basically "get familiar with the viscosity, stickiness, rate of evaporation, and rigidity of a new material every week" class. I'm much better able to reason about interactions between materials because of an hour a day making things with my hands.
I love the idea of libraries, but where I live most of them are almost as bad as public transportation. People fighting, being loud, people on drugs asking for money, so it's difficult to get comfortable to sit and read. Sadly you have to go to the suburbs to get a quiet library where you don't get hassled. Amazon certainly isn't the solution, but neither is having libraries be the daytime homeless shelter.
I was recently looking for a place to work on a dev project over the course of a few weeks. I looked into various co-working facilities and all of them were hundreds of dollars a month and tried to emulate trendy startup culture, down to the noisy open-office layouts, on-tap kombucha and mixer events. It was a nightmare. On a lark, I went to the local library. It was free, quiet and had rock-solid wifi. It was perfect.
The local library where I live (Sydney suburb), when I tried reading there - after abandoning reading in parks because full of roaming people on mobile phones - was interrupted every minute by someone running out yelling I'M IN THE LIBRARY! HANG ON! into their phone. :-(
They sold off/gave away all their books and music that aren't borrowed so much, i.e. most of what was good. They have about 5 books on philosophy, and a whole aisle on christianity...
Librarians are pretty brutal about shelf space and 'discards' are ruthless and based on readership as you noticed.
In UK most public libraries will offer to get a book in on the 'inter-library loan' system - there is usually a charge. University libraries (https://copac.jisc.ac.uk/) are (mostly) accessible through this system.
The other strategy would be to try to increase readership of philosophy books perhaps starting with texts accessible to the teenager age range (Sophie's World?, the various comic book options?)
It's years since I was in a library, the one where I lived was getting worse for a while. The stock of books was decreasing and the staff were resorting to displaying them in a manner that made this less obvious such as some books being displayed face out to take up more space.
Where I live now, I'm twenty miles from the nearest, not very good library, and never go there.
Yeah, the one I grew up with (and worked at in 2005), I revisited around 2010 and it kinda hurt to see just how much they'd gotten rid of. Not only had a large number of shelves been removed for a new bank of computers, the remaining ones were relatively bare like you describe. Probably only had around half the number of books it used to, and this was after they'd built an annex and tripled in size in the late 90s.
Wasn't long after that I moved away and haven't had an urge to go back to any library.
Around here the standard seems to be €2.50, and I recently found a library in my neighborhood that only takes €1.50.
I haven't used ILL too much in the past, but I recently decided that lending before buying only those books that are worth it will save me a lot of money.
As I understand it, they've effectively been displaced there. As other places they can go have been closed off to them, they end up looking for an alternative dry, sheltered place where it's possible to sit down and even wash; the library. It would be a real shame if libraries shut down as a side-effect of other cuts to public services.
If you're homeless, (in the UK) you can wash and keep dry in a shopping centre (mall) which will have far better facilities.
The only caveat being you have to not look or act like a homeless person and you must treat the place and other people with respect. Sadly, a lot of homeless people don't seem able to do this.
To be fair, it's not the fault of libraries if society offers no more humane options for the homeless than to hang out there... nor is it the fault of the homeless.
It isn't necessarily their fault, but it still feels false to wax poetically about the educational and societial benefits of what is effectively a homeless shelter.
Not to say that homeless shelters aren't useful to society. Obviously they are. I just doubt that this is what library proponents were thinking about when they talk about libraries.
>but it still feels false to wax poetically about the educational and societial benefits of what is effectively a homeless shelter.
Bridges and overpasses also shelter the homeless sometimes, but their other benefits remain intact, and not all libraries are "effectively homeless shelters."
Indeed those things are both homeless shelters and provide other societal benefits.
The fact that there are homeless people living under bridges, does not take away from the value that the bridge provides.
This is not the case for libraries. For the ones that do act as homeless shelters, you may as well just throw away all the books, and everything, because you aren't going to be getting much work done there.
People for whom manners and respect of other people are alien concepts. In the UK, their numbers are growing at an alarming rate, mainly because there is so little done to sanction such behavior.
What do you expect a librarian – who is, after all, not a trained security guard – to do besides simply call the police? And in so many of the examples that I see people complain about, it would seem that the disruption by homeless people or drug users is only noticed after it has taken place (e.g. they trash the toilets or leave needles or paraphenalia behind).
What an odd "problem". I would expect the librarian to call the police. And if there was a "trained security guard" on the premises I would expect him to also call the police.
Clearly you haven't encountered the Police in the UK. Unless it's a life or death emergency situation the default response is often one of disinterest.
Is it the best option we can provide to them with that money though.
Why can't we just admit that they are homeless shelters and turn them into fulltime homeless shelter instead of pretending to be a library( for whatever sentimental reasons). Seems like we got the worst of both worlds in this case.
Where I am in Canada, I haven’t found suburb libraries to be a safe haven either; you have bored, angst-ridden teens wanting to start fights there instead and there’s usually not as much security to stop them compared to an urban library.
Is it actually your experience of these things or is it just what you've been told? As somebody who lives in a big US city which my Midwestern small-town relatives sees as "scary", I use public transit daily and the library weekly. There aren't really any druggies or panhandlers on the buses or trains or libraries. There are some on the actual streets, and that's unfortunate, but not nearly the degree that all the "urban blight" movies from the 1970s and 1980s suggested.
It's my actual experiences in two of the United States' largest cities. It's not like Escape From New York, but it's more than enough to make it hard to get into any kind of reading or work. Maybe you're used to it, but as someone who uses public transportation only half a dozen times a year it's off-putting in either situation.
If you're talking about one of the few US cities like New York where the vast majority of people use public transportation, then that's why it's not going to match other people's experiences where public transportation is mainly used by people who have no other option.
Sometimes, in the absence of a good solution, the best thing to do is try to keep the inadequate, incomplete solutions we have intact. That might mean tolerating some annoying behavior, voting to increase funding for local libraries (if that is an option for you), etc.
you are right libaries in chicago burbs have positive and inspiring energy while those in the city have dull 'government' energy and are filled with sadness and grief. I love going to libraries in the burbs but can't wait to GTFO out the ones in the city when I am there. I highly doubt that these libraries in the city are helping the needy in any big way( I would like to be wrong on this one).
It seems to work for everyone in my neighborhood. Homeless, wealthy, children, young and old all using the local library. They have work training programs and children’s programs.
Logan Square in Chicago. Chicago is known for having an excellent library system. A couple examples; all the major museums have passes at each library that can be "checked out" for free entry [1], Harold Washington Library has a Maker Lab with 3D printers, design software and laser and electronic cutters [2], there is a program called YOUmedia where some libraries have full sound editing equipment (Chance the Rapper used this to make his first mixtape) [3]. I can also get any book delivered to my local library for pickup through the CPL phone app.
> [Libraries provide] welcoming public spaces for the poor, the homeless and young people.
And isn't this precisely why normal people don't use libraries anymore? Because they've become de facto homeless shelters with unsavory guests who frequently smell awful or use computers for watching porn. I recently visited the famous Seattle public library and was shocked by the nature of the guests.
Last library I went into was shortly after a local school had released the students for the day. It was full of kids excitedly looking around and checking out books and just generally seeming to enjoy themselves. It was awesome.
I wouldn't blame the library for Seattle's more general problems (income disparity / regressive tax setup, high cost of living, homelessness, drug use).
The porn use is a bit disgusting, and segues into some freedom of use topics - FWIW in Austin they sorta solve this by having separate 'unfiltered' computers with recessed screens. In seattle they seem to solve things by having separate computer areas between adults and kid areas.
As for library bathroom issues, Seattle libraries have been doing things to make them less inviting to wrong folks by making the sinks shallow, removing paper hand towel racks, etc. It's arguably a hard balance.
Anyway, if you get past these issues the Seattle libraries are pretty impressive compared to many other towns. The Seattle downtown library top floors are great for getting work done, and many other branches have quiet areas. The online access of e-books/audiobooks is also fairly vast.
It is unfortunate that your experience was not a positive one...but i suppose this says more about how society has failed in numerous ways that some citizens are grasping at straws, and leveraging the only available institutions for them.
You can say the same thing about public transit, parks, and the sidewalk.
Does it matter? Not one bit. Once those places are allowed to become disgusting, people with a choice in the matter stop going to them.
"You'd be surprised by how many San Franciscans think that the problem with human feces or used syringes on sidewalks is the 'lack of empathy' of those who notice them. That or their 'sense of entitlement.'"
>I recently visited the famous Seattle public library and was shocked by the nature of the guests.
Perhaps you should reflect upon the nature of your city and the massive changes it is undergoing, with a particular focus upon on the distribution of resources like shelter, before taking your animus out on the public library system. That the libraries have taken on this role serves as an example of the failures elsewhere in your civic society.
If who you consider "normal" people don't use libraries, consider what that means about what has been normalized.
Your local public library can help you find resources to get you started.
I don’t take my kid to the library because of the homeless people there. I don’t oppose government funds being used to provide daytime facilities for homeless people, I just don’t think it should be at the same location as the kids library.
I think it’s fine for a homeless person to come in for half an hour to peruse books and check them out. In that case the homeless population of the library will be roughly the same percentage as they are of the city overall.
That’s obviously not the case, homeless people are over 50% of the library’s population at any time of day since they stay all day while everyone else spends 15 minutes.
All the public libraries I've been in have a distinct adult wing and children's wing, though under the same roof. Aside from the collections, the children's wing is colorfully decorated with ample play areas, child-proofed computers, and higher noise tolerance. Parents generally feel comfortable letting their kids wander the children's section unsupervised.
So...it's all the same library. Again, in my big city people seem to get along just fine in our libraries. There is a kids section and I see plenty of parents, caretakers and nannies with kids there every day. Meanwhile, people in the other sections go about their business using the internet or studying.
It's why I stopped going regularly. The smell and of course during winter, the constant coughing. But mostly the smell.
Wish libraries would be quicker about growing their online presence. I still don't know why they have stacks and stacks of books on shelves. And why do they have so many cds and dvds? Why not move it all online?
I'm a pretty normal person living in San Francisco and I work pretty regularly from the public library in my neighborhood. The free WiFi is nice and the only issue I've ever had is kids coming in to watch YouTube videos after school which is really just a minor annoyance.
My local library has even made a tech push, not just with computers available, but also has a couple of 3D printers and offers classes on using them. Or you can bring in finished .STL files for printing, for the cost of the material used.
Is this in USA, how does state provision of such services pair with USAmerican hatred of communism? Libraries, tool-shares, hackerspaces and such seem to be the epitomy of communism.
It's different to a co-op model as you don't have to individually buy in, it's provided as a function of the state, no? Are their commonly private [non-state run] libraries in USA that you can become a member of, I'd guess not, which makes your claim about election/forced dependency seem strange (in context, though it might work more generally).
Because a lot of the anti-communist sentiment in the US tends to be directed at communism-the-system-of-government as epitomized by several present and past countries (i.e. it's more of a nation-vs-nation dislike of communism--you can see that even in the nationalistic rhetoric the was laced through McCarthyist media).
Meanwhile, many US citizens, even conservative ones, enjoy and endorse some ideals that are communitarian or were popularized under communist societies (state-endorsed curricula, vaccination/healthcare/drug treatment, and more).
A lot of people like to decry that as hypocrisy, but I see it simply as a difference in perception/definitions of communism instead.
I find both viewpoints in myself. I think it's important to be able to pick and choose tactics and governance techniques without committing a state to a heavily ideological philosophy of order. Not that I think the US is currently doing too great a job at either of those.
Reflexive hatred of socialism/communism has been on the way out for a while. The Cold War has been over for decades, and so there's a lot less national interest in demonizing the USSR and its policies; that stuff is now endemic to a narrower political circle. Even if that weren't the case, it arguably never really applied to local shared spaces like libraries, churches, schools, and so on. None of that stuff looks like our idea of a Soviet-style command economy to anyone except the most zealous anticommunist crusaders.
This is in Illinois; the public library district is primarily funded by local taxes within its service area, and referenda on such were passed on multiple occasions. Some state and federal grants have also funded tech improvements. Its current land was purchased from the local school district in the 1970s.
Overall, regardless of today's bullshit political climate on the national level, there's a great deal of local civic pride here. The local government (which is separate from the library district) runs a balanced budget, the municipally-owned water system charges significantly lower rates than a neighboring town's privately-owned water system even though both of them get their water from Chicago, and the village has (when it made sense to do so) entered into electrical power purchase agreements that have resulted in lower electrical rates for residents. There's also a long tradition of reusing civic buildings; the village hall is a former school building, and the original fire station became the police station when the fire district expanded to three stations to deal with the town's growth.
Libraries are inherently anti-capitalist; they make knowledge available to all regardless of ability to pay. A system of community ownership of resources in order to benefit all members is the definition of "communist": that's where it enters the picture.
>the municipally-owned water system charges significantly lower rates than a neighboring town's privately-owned water system //
Which, as far as stereotypes goes at least, is "un-American, are you some sort of commie?" because it's a cooperative governmental system in which state ownership reduces costs and prevents a private enterprise from profiting from it.
Some interesting answers, including yours, thanks.
I wasn't talking figuratively either. The literal definition of communism is not as you gave it, at least not according to the people who devised the ideology and came up with the name for it. It's all about the means of production - for Marxists, the entire human history, and especially the structure of society, revolves around "modes of production", which are ultimately defined by the relative positions of productive members of society wrt means of production and each other, creating economic classes.
To some extent, I guess, a library (or rather the knowledge contained in it) could also be claimed to be the means of production. But I don't think that's the consensus among the adherents.
.... a theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs.
.... synonyms: collectivism, state ownership, socialism, radical socialism;
That's a vast oversimplification, as is the case with most dictionary definitions. You need to go to primary sources - starting with "The Capital" - to discover the nuances.
The notion that communism equals state ownership is particularly funny, given that Marx (and all his followers) defined communism as a stateless society.
I visit the library often. Two libraries in fact as I used to live in two counties and each had their own and now both share resources. They give me information on things I would not know because I didn't want to buy a book I was worried wasn't what I was looking for. It helped me learn about FreeBSD which helped me start a business I've been running for 15 years now along with the programming languages. Libraries helped me cook and build things for my home.
I own most of those books I borrowed from the library now and they still sit on my bookshelf next to me.
> Libraries don’t just provide free access to books and other cultural materials, they also offer things like companionship for older adults, de facto child care for busy parents, language instruction for immigrants and welcoming public spaces for the poor, the homeless and young people.
This is a description of the proper role of the church in civil society and a public library is a poor substitute.
The church ushered in life with baptism, it educated the youth, it facilitated the building of families in marriage, and comforted the grieving in death. It extolled the virtues of the fruits of the spirit in relationships: "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control". It sought unity in diversity ("There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."), and undermined social hierarchy ("You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great")
The church had problems, but it was an important component of civil society. Now having abandoned it, we have nothing to replace it with, and we're paying the price.
I understand that there are a lot of objections to religion here, and I fully expect this comment to be downvoted to oblivion, but purely from a sociological perspective, there was a lot lost in the relentless pursuit of secularism.
Churches encourage complacency (all of life is God's plan), many fought hard against abortion, contraception, and women's rights/equality, and the insular tribalism such places encourage has enabled a lot of truly ugly behavior to be covered up due to in-group loyalty (see the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal for an example). Ultimately secularization was a necessary step in the evolution of society, as it's difficult if not impossible to reconcile a techno-scientific post-industrial society with simplistic parochial ideologies.
Personally, I wish I could believe in religion. I want to live in a world with a heaven and a hell and a god looking out for us, where things are logical and just and evil-doers - eventually - always suffer. I think I'd probably be a lot happier believing in that pleasant lie than I am living with the truth. But such a thing just isn't in my wiring, and I imagine many modern people share that sentiment. Hence, I suspect, all the new age woo that's basically just re-packaging Jesus in a more digestible form.
ever been to an Episcopalian service? I've been to a few dozen at a few different churches in a few different states. They are a split from Catholicism, so the rituals during service can seem familiar. However, the sermon feels like your father or grandfather (and some cases mother or grandmother) reassuring you for the week, and telling you to be your best self. It's about as liberal as mainstream Western religion gets.
Thing is, the denominations that tend to be less fire and brimstone, are also less communal. I always assumed that it comes from strength (or lack thereof) of shared convictions.
They have convictions, too. The more salient differentiator is probably extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivations, i.e. the need for a church to be a place to show off or enforce virtues
I always assumed this is what TED aspires to be... the Quaker / Unitarian Universalist / Reform Synagogue of North American intellectual and wealthy elites.
Unless I am very badly misunderstanding TED, it provides none of the things that churches provide for their members. Some of these things are described succinctly but clearly in the post you are responding too. Could you expand on this?
Depends on where you were. Growing up in NYC, which is pretty multifaceted and secular, relying on religious services was not going to work as a society-wide solution simply because the entire city did not share a religion. (In fact, some local religious communities, like the Hasidic Jews, are actually under investigation for failing to provide things like English literacy in their curricula.)
One thing New York City has going for it despite its awful governance is strong civic institutions, like the museums and the library systems (there are three), all of which have performed the functions listed in the article for well over a century at this point.
The concept of “the library” is one that holds deep emotional attachment for many people. The nostalgia of book smells, the exhibitionism of reading “cool” physical books in public, the idea of being physically connected to “the community”.
The core function of a library, storing physical books, makes little sense anymore. Digital books are far superior in cost and functionality. But those emotionally attached will claim “they’re not the same”.
Our province in Canada has a population of 500,000 and has over 100 libraries. Each of those libraries needs to carry multiple copies of important literature. Many of these libraries go unused. It’s a big waste of money yet people can’t move on because of emotional attachment and emotional reasoning.
I do believe in the reinvisioning of libraries as a more digital space, a place to work, and a place for the public to learn.
But let’s stop the emotional reasoning and use pure logic. “Civil society” is more alive than ever, on the internet.
I’m unsure how you got the idea that libraries are only places to read books. Every library I’ve ever been to also provided a variety of other services: access to computers, various workshops and free classes, a place to host clubs and other community meetings, and also a workspace for students and adults. Even in the most rural libraries I’ve been to I’ve been able to grab a flyer or brochure of multiple events occurring that month in the library- everything from the local crochet club to child-oriented book clubs to free classes on basic internet research.
I understand the argument and I agree that digital books are the future, however, they are so inferior in discoverability that if my library ever moves all-digital I will replace it with one of my 10 local used bookstores. I need to browse books to find some I like and am not interested in letting algorithms or Internet echo chambers do so for me.
My own library also has copies of e.g. sheet music... I agree that those could be digital but it's more practical to stick a giant piece of paper on my keyboard vs a tablet (would be afraid the tablet could fall, also don't own a tablet). And the library is often one of few places these days that young children see physical books in large numbers... won't it be bad for their eyes to do all that reading digitally?
Agreed, the UX of paper is still so much better than kindle. Nicer to read, no lag, easier to organize and share, nicer taking notes in margins. I bought a kindle and went back to paper.
One of the main benefits of ebooks is cost of production, surely. There is a massive cost saving (and impact on jobs etc.) but it seems the producers have managed to keep all of that benefit to themselves?
It's more than just production, let me highlight storage and transport costs too (having just moved house with tonnes of books it's very much on my mind).
There's also longevity, which ties in with search-ability. Modern paper even under the best of conditions only has a century of shelf-life, where as digital data should persist for forever. Also as it's digital we get the benefits of flowing text, searching/indexing and easily converting to new formats and even languages - and the ability to easily update these conversions as technology progresses.
Theoretically (on paper?) digital books have all the benefits in the world. As a book lover I still can't quite get on with them in all but the trashiest of uses.
Exactly. An eBook costs nothing to churn out an incremental copy, but often ends up being as expensive as a hardback by the time the publisher and distributor and platform get a crack at the profits.
What method do you use to browse books? Library sorting is already basically an algorithm that seems fairly easy to set up digitally. The only obvious difference I see is a larger pool of books to draw from.
Our local library has “displays”, somewhat like the endcaps at a book store. Sometimes they are seasonal or on a particular theme. Other times they say, “If you liked A, you might also like B, C, D, or ....” The librarians sometimes have good suggestions too.
Beyond that, I love walking through the stacks and looking to see what catches my eye. This is literally my favorite thing about working at a university. Paging through Amazons recommendations (new editions of a text book you bought in 2008, books 2 and 4 of some series, and a few best-sellers) is not even close.
It's not the method (my method is pick a shelf and look at titles, and yes, it's doable online), it's that:
1) online there's just too much stuff. Libraries culling a ton of inventory serves the purpose of the really bad books being off the (real) shelf in relatively short order. Dig through Amazon's Kindle ebooks store to have an idea how much all-digital suffers from lack of this. As well as
2) I have developed, from years of reading, the ability to look at a shelf with the full aperture of my vision, and in that single glance, pick patterns of letters on the book spines such that I can identify interesting titles at a rate of maybe 200 books per minute. I understand non-readers and people who buy books off of somebody else's review list don't have that ability, but I don't see why I should be deprived of something that literally saves me 30 minutes a week to cater to, well, people who don't actually like books.
3) Some of the best books I have read at used bookstores and librairies simply don't have a digital form. They're locally published books from decades past that probably sold in the 1000 to 10000 copies range. Newer books in that space always have a digital edition, but there is a ton to learn from the past, and I often read because I am tired of existing within my own time/space bound, hearing about the same concerns. If I want to know what my contemporaries think, I can have a conversation. To learn how people I will never have the chance to meet think, I read books. (To learn how people I will never have the chance to meet really think, I read novels.)
Now 1) could be solved by an algorithm, but I write algorithms for a living and I don't trust them. 2) is trickier. 3) is definitely solvable but the economic incentives don't align, and I trust the markets even less than the algorithms.
> Libraries culling a ton of inventory serves the purpose of the really bad books being off the (real) shelf in relatively short order. Dig through Amazon's Kindle ebooks store to have an idea how much all-digital suffers from lack of this.
Sounds like an unintended but desirable effect. Why not make it intended, and design for it directly? Libraries could have a curated collection that they promote, and archives of all the other stuff.
> I have developed, from years of reading, the ability to look at a shelf with the full aperture of my vision, and in that single glance, pick patterns of letters on the book spines such that I can identify interesting titles at a rate of maybe 200 books per minute. I understand non-readers and people who buy books off of somebody else's review list don't have that ability, but I don't see why I should be deprived of something that literally saves me 30 minutes a week to cater to, well, people who don't actually like books.
For starters, that's a very offensive assumption you're making here - that people who don't have that skill "don't actually like books". Have you considered that they might be reading several books every month, just not paper books like you?
But also, that skill you describe is equally applicable to all kinds of lists. If you can do that with books on the shelf, you can learn to do that with a screen. I mean, do we really need to subsidize shelves full of paper books solely to avoid making a few people's skills obsolete and require them to relearn if they want to remain as efficient as they were before?
Of course, digital makes things fundamentally different, anyway. Why browse long shelves, when you can do fuzzy contextual search?
> 1) could be solved by an algorithm, but I write algorithms for a living and I don't trust them.
Seems like one that needs a largely random algorithm with some additional weight for recent and popular works. Amazon has a separate goal to a library, using their stores isn't a fair comparison.
2 requires pictures or facsimiles of book spines, not particularly tricky. This entire process is ridiculous though. The only way you can spot anywhere near 200 interesting books in a minute is if every book is interesting, what you're actually judging is likely a marketing decision, and you have no reason to expect your picks were particularly good.
3 is a copyright issue. Google books already has a surprising number of those books archived, and your chance of reading them would be far greater if they just required one random person to find the book and upload it. Even still, in 20 years the digital libraries will be overflowing with people you can't meet talking about experiences you can't encounter.
Yes, I think all three issues won't be issues in 20 or 30 years. I fully expect my children to grow up being able to "spot" digital titles the way I do with spines, and looking at the physical books roughly the way I looked at my grandma's physical ledger-book. (Edited: Although I think you misunderstood me on 3. I am willing to pay for those books, provided the price is sustainable considering the quantity I am consuming, and they are not in English, which may qualify what I meant when I say they largely don't exist digitally currently.)
I meant I can classify 200 books as interesting or not in a minute, obviously not find 200 interesting ones. It takes me 15 minutes to find 4 or 5 books I actually want to read.
One unfortunate side effects of books moving to digital (although, to be clear, books moving to digital is not remotely a bad thing in itself) is that they are getting longer. There is fewer and fewer pressure on authors to limit the length of newer books that are unproven, with the result that people who don't know how to speed read are seeing reading novels as more and more of a daunting thing, which I think is sad.
In my part of the US (Northeast Massachusetts) libraries address the cost of duplicate items by joining into consortia. I can, from the online catalog, "place a hold" on any book in any member library. A daily courier makes the rounds and picks up the held books from the owning library and brings them to my library. They then send me a text saying "pick up your book."
The post office also transports books library-to-llibrary at a very favorable rate if need be.
It's a great way to measure demand for books, and buy what's needed where needed. It also allows library patrons access to a much larger collection than an individual town library could.
I prefer paper books to digital books due to the way digital books are administered. When the library only has 2 Harry Potter and the Sorcerers' Stone digital books and they are DRM'd, it kills the experience.
As a child, I used the library quite often - I had no other choice, but I would often find the books I wanted to read on loan to others, and it was particularly bad if you wanted to read a series of books, inevitably one of them would be on loan to someone who had forgotten about them for months.
I was so happy when I got a job and could just go to Borders to buy the books I wanted.
And now I have a Kindle and can get books at a moments notice.
But without disposable income, the library is the only real option. But I guess these days I would have probably been more interested in my phone than books, so maybe the times really have moved on.
> Digital books are far superior in cost and functionality.
Paper books can't be deleted, don't need power, and have no DRM. Once you get beyond just text and start including diagrams, illustrations, or photos, e-ink doesn't hold up.
Paper books are fairly easy to spoil even inadvertently (just spill some crap on it - a cup of coffee that a laptop or a tablet will likely survive fine can easily ruin a paperback).
You can get digital books without DRM. And if we don't pass laws like DMCA that conscript the entire power of the state to enforce that DRM, it wouldn't be viable anyway. Indeed, anyone who has seen #bookz knows that technical viability is lacking already, and it's only the legal regime that keeps things the way they are
e-ink is just one technology among many available options for reading digital books. The beauty of a digital book is that it's not tied to any particular device, so you can pick whatever tool is most comfortable for you to read that particular book in the appropriate context.
And we have so many other things that need power already (including, say, lighting, so that you could read those paper books whenever you want) that it's kinda strange for that to be more than a very minor point.
I appreciate the librarians because they're one of the very few people who stand up against ubiquitous government surveillance. It's nice to have a place where I am not profiled based on what I browse.
Avoiding patrons from being tracked/potentially in the future prosecuted for their reading is professional ethics for librarians, pretty much regardless of political alignment.
I'm curious if this is still a thing. Libraries in my county have moved to a completely online system for checking out books, renewing, etc. The system regularly recommends books to me 'based on previous borrows', which indicates they are tracking/storing information about what I have borrowed in the past. The next question is, who has access to this information? My guess in the library system here does not have a strong infosec department, nor a strong legal department to resist subpoenas/police shenanigans.
Many libraries will purge checkout records once a patron returns books, but the increasing reliance on centralized cloud-based ILS vendors is making this harder to do reliably.
I'd appreciate it if you could name the online system your county uses. (Or if you can provide a link.)
That's interesting and new to me, as I'm not American. Does the American government track or prosecute people for their reading habits in libraries? Is it to be expected then that librarians are aligned to the political left?
As with all professions you'll find individual librarians that have political positions all over the board.
The biggest professional organization for them in the USA (the ALA) is not officially politically aligned, but some of their core positions, notably privacy, intellectual freedom and anti-censorship have of late have come to be seen as politically left and in the States especially more aligned with the Democratic party.
Demographically librarians in the United States do lean liberal but I don't know that they do at any higher rates than other educated people.
Finally, this is not just an American thing. The IFLA has very similar positions on privacy, intellectual freedom and censorship and monitors those positions around their world.
There was a case a while back where a woman poisoned her husband. The police found her thumbprint on a book on poisons in the library. I don't think they used library records, they just checked the book itself.
I also recall that there was considerable pushback from the librarians when the government demanded they hand over all borrower records.
Next time I go to the library I'll ask what the current state of this is. I hope their practice is to purge records when you return a book.
It could start at some point if detailed records exist. Libraries operate long-term, political climate changes. And of course other actors could be interested in records too. I don't think you can claim someone on the political right would by default not want to protect readers.
You wouldn't, in general, be able to ban books in the US, but if it was possible to profile people based on their library records, say somebody read Das Capital, The Anarchist Cookbook and a few similar books like that and you are the police searching for an anarchist bomber?
Librarians have a similar professional reverence for their patrons' privacy as doctors do for their patients and attorneys for their clients.
The legal status of attorney-client privilege and medical privacy are both thoroughly enshrined, but there's no corresponding protection for borrowing records. Librarians are often in the news for protecting them.
Librarians and library scientist have talked about this for a long time. Look up "library as third place" if you want to read more (and get an insider perspective).
