f13.net

http://www.library.phila.gov/

Politics thread on this too. It's not a good thing, obviously, but the underlying story is that it is political brinksmanship between the city of Philadelphia, the State legislature and then in turn the Republicans and the Democrats in the legislature. (A bit like California only without the horrifying constitutional issues.) The Free Library's administrators are helping to turn up the pressure on the budgetary holdouts by publicizing the closure via viral media, etc.

oops.  Sorry.  I didn't know because I don't read the politics forum.  It smells stuffy in there.  Delete me if you must, just don't den me.   :ye_gods:

Seems to me there's a non-politics angle that's just about libraries and how they matter in an everyday way. Libraries pretty much kept me going as a kid, that's for sure.

I'm a librarian in Columbus, Ohio.  I just took a 10% hours cut for the next year or two at least.  Salaried staff just got hit for 5% across the board.  We closed Sundays at all branches except the downtown and reduced hours for all 22 libraries in our system. 

Luckily, we've got good leadership that didn't need to let anyone go.  But things are going to get real bad in the next year or two as we've cut new materials budgets down by a LOT and we're putting off public PC upgrades for another year or two.  It's tight. 

It could have been really, really bad.  They were talking about closing 1/4 of our branches.  Hell, the city just closed all the inner city rec centers and then they damn near shut down the libraries.  The only place left for urban youth is the streets. 

We're having the same sorts of cuts at the library where I work in California. Most libraries are city or county institutions rather than run by the state, the feds, or privately. That almost always means they're funded by property taxes. As housing prices have dropped and people lose their jobs, tax revenues through the floor. No politician wants to be branded as "the one who killed the library", and this case is almost probably gamesmanship, but unless something changes pretty soon we're going to see this happening for real.

Given the choice between cutting police, fire, schools, sewage treatment, public transportation and libraries... I'm guessing people will choose libraries. Many already depend upon generous private donations to stay alive.

Now this is true: without a resurrection of the basic idea of a well-funded public dimension of everyday life in the US, libraries in general are likely to be the first to go when budgetary push comes to shove.

Folks need to ask how a less-wealthy US managed to afford making libraries into a standard part of public life in the 19th and early 20th Century. Some of that is that libraries and other public services drew down a share of government revenues before the expansion of entitlement programs after 1950, but some of it is also that we had a much healthier tax revenue at all levels of government, taken from a much more equitably distributed income range in the 1950s-1960s.

So on the other side of that historical moment, folks really need to take stock and ask, "What makes for a good society?" There are some things that will be hard to restore if we tear them down after building them up.

people still read books?    :why_so_serious:
 
On topic, libraries were much cheaper to run back in the day - everything had a start-up cost but low upkeep maintenance. now-a-days, if the library doesn't have computers with net access, they are just a book warehouse. I understand the value as I frequented the library for many a school report and all the way thru grad school for research; however, the internet has taken over as the place to go for info and the library is the backup resource.

Yeah, it's also true that the economics of publishing has changed a lot, and not for the better. With academic libraries, for example, I'd be just as happy if every journal publisher died in a fire, because the whole business of journal publication makes no sense whatsoever. (Short version: universities subsidize academic research; academic researchers give away the results of their work to journals for free or actually pay them to publish; journals are edited by academic volunteers not paid staff; journal publishers turn around and sell back the journals at very high prices well above the cost of publication to university libraries.  :ye_gods:)

Plus there's just so so so many more books published than in 1950, despite falling rates of book consumption by the public. So acquisition and cataloguing even in small libraries is a much more complicated business than it once was. Add on the need to have a lot of digital resources and to know how to maintain that infrastructure, and even a tiny branch library is a different kind of place than twenty or thirty years ago.

Doesn't mean we don't need them anymore, though. I was just talking to a family member who has moved to Amsterdam and he was stunned by the major public library there--not only good book and materials collections, but endless scads of public computers, most of which are in use most of the time--because the government there has decided, in part, that this kind of access to information is a fundamental public good.

The internet is the place to go for research...because everyone takes wikipedia as truth. There is still value in having information professionals who are able to properly evaluate sources for people and find /good/ information. Plus, as Khaldun mentions, we have stuff like EBSCO and other databases that are pretty amazing when you dig into them.

As far as operating costs, computers aren't shit. There's a ton of grant money out there for them, all of our computers are purchased with donations and grants. All of them, all the printers, network stuff, everything. In ten years I've had to dip into the budget for a printer and a couple switches that died between grants.

You know what's fucking us the hardest? Health care costs. And politicians taking care of pork over services and an ignorant public that continues to elect them to their detriment.

Any society without bookshops or liberaries scares the hell out of me.

Libraries even!

Pointing out the hilarity takes the hilarity away from it.

Who needs paper? (http://www.ebooks.com/)

Yeah, fuck those poor people. They deserve literacy like they need health care, not at all, the lazy fucks.

Besides the "books are obsolete tech" argument being bunk because the tech hasn't saturated, it's also bunk because into the modern cultural fetish for trivia. Just like the soundbite has completely overwhelmed news, the statistic has replaced the essay and the article has replaced the book. It's rarely considered important to know a subject in depth so long as you've got the bullet points.

Libraries are becoming irrelevant because they've focused on scrambling to keep up with a flood of marketing and technology. They maintain subscriptions to dozens of magazines. They offer CDs, videos, and DVDs. They offer public internet access. They buy ALL of the new novels and new children's picture books. They buy them all hardcover. When Harry Potter came out our library system probably bought more than 100 copies. Of every book. Most of those have been trashed since they wouldn't sell used. Everybody who wanted to buy a copy bought a copy.

What they needed to focus on is the services they offer. Their collection of old information that's hard to find online, that nobody keeps because it's out of date, and the librarians who understand where to find that and how to decipher it. If you want to know something, not generally understand, not pick up a few facts about, but genuinely KNOW... a library is one of the only places you can go to get the depth of information and variety of points of view. Plus old information is cheap. People generally give it away.

By chasing the now and focusing on increasing circulation numbers, libraries have turned themselves into "the free book store/video store/music store/internet cafe"... a sort of last resort entertainment venue. And they did so at great expense. Higher circulation requires more staff, more purchasing requires more staff to process books. It all adds up.

If they'd just remained quaint and "irrelevant" they wouldn't be in nearly so much trouble today.

I don't think that's extreme enough. We're going to have to see records from your library showing how often people check out classic literature that isn't for summer reading and I want you to crosscheck that against public internet growth over the last 7 years.

Hell, I'll keep it simple, has anyone over 15 checked out Catcher in the Rye in the last decade?

How about Shakespeare?

Seriously, I'm going to flat out say - with nothing to back it up - that libraries play exactly no fucking role in modern literacy rates.

That's kind of the problem with our current literacy rates...

Even if you are right, which you may well be, I don't think we should go tearing down our libraries.

Well then I suggest libraries get on the ball with the marketing. Every tenth page in every book gets an ad placement. Start selling those ad spaces! On the walls, we can put scrolling posterboards to advertise whoever buys the space. Hell, I think we can get Nike to sponsor a "READ IT ON PAPER" campaign as long as we give them enough spaces to whore their goods. And the coup de grace - Skeeball in the basement.   :grin:

amirite

I want the funding pxib's library gets. But we buy hardcover so they can circ more without falling apart. Binding has gone to the shitter, though.

Anyway, I hope all of you stay lucky and successful and never have to learn why libraries are so important to society.

I can think of examples that fit every single one of those jokes except "every tenth page". It's already happened.

Philly's cultural output is about to drop by two points. I recommend building a monastery to compensate.

They will do fine with trickle-down literacy.

u mean ppl will lern 2 read n' spel n' stuffz?

My friend teaches junior college and not only does she come up against papers written in Comic Sans font, she is now seeing a growing amount of txt-based shorthand even with students having access to spellcheck. I almost guarantee that in most school districts, kids actually think the word what is spelled 'wat.'

lolwut?

I love my local library and I'm not short on personal funds for internet or book purchases for that matter. I go there every two weeks, grab books for myself, films for my kid, reference books I would never buy etc...

The free internet machines (8 or so) are always packed with people and this isn't a big library, it's a small community branch. Killing libraries is fucking retarded. Literacy and education as well access to information are really the only hope for the dis-advantaged.

Anyway, sorry to hear about this, it's a 'bad thing'.

Are you saying that people read Shakespeare on the internet these days so therefore libraries are irrelevant?   :uhrr:

I hit up my local library every week or two for a new armload of reading material.  It's not so much that books are too expensive (although they aren't that cheap), it's that if I bought every book I ever read I'd have to be constantly selling them back to the store or there wouldn't be room in my house for people.  I'm pressed for shelf space as it is.

And really, fuck e-books.

That's the same kind of logic that killed Reading Rainbow!

While I still read a lot, pretty much none of it's books.  Still, me-at-14 was not going to pick up Animal Farm without my middle school library.  Now, even though I can find a lot of research on Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/), I still need to use my college library's online resources or truck it down to the central LA Public Library sometimes.

Libraries are relatively less relevant than they used to be.  (Same as newspapers.)  They're still pretty fucking important though.

Until my local library was closed down I would cart an arm of books out every week or so. They tore down the new library to build a town center+library,its been three fucking years and the foundation is not even completed. The next closest library is 20 minutes and downtown with absolutely shit parking. Reading a book is an experience other formats don't mimic. Texture,smell all the goodness thats lost on a screen regardless of how nice it looks. Books naturally are going to be phased out, but not yet.

I dont think assuming access to books plays a factor in literacy is a big stretch.

Idiocracy is becoming true!  i like money

I don't get this. Maybe I'm confused, but I'd never go to a public library for research. I'd go to the state library, a university library, or use the internet. (It has more than just wikipedia!)

Who uses local libraries for research apart from school kids? Or are the libraries in question here equivalent to state libraries? Or do you mean research in a very general way?

I'd always assumed people use local libraries for pleasure reading for the most part.

Negative. I'm just saying I'm not sure they have the importance required to be the money sink they are for the 5 types of media they carry.  In terms of pure literacy, I'm not sure they have much importance at all.

Obviously someone uses libraries for research or there wouldn't be so many university law, medical and reference libraries.  Anyway, I can't read books off my computer.  It's uncomfortable and makes my head achey.

What kind of research are you talking about? We get all kinds of stuff from people confused about tax forms (state dumped that on us the same year they cut our funding and raised their salaries) to folks working on cars (chilton's) or looking up blue book value, to people looking up home repairs (I learned how to drywall and lay masonry mostly out of library books), there's a huge spectrum of things people come here to learn. Go to your local library and walk around for a while. That's one of the great things about working here, we get to see members of the community interested in bettering themselves or learning more about the challenges of daily life...and help them with that.

Schild, some day you might learn that not everyone lives the same life you do, doesn't have the technical knowledge or money to buy technology. As I said, I hope you're never in the situation to understand how critical libraries are.

Schild in general has a hard time grasping that some people are not him.

As far as research goes, I can pretty much tell when someone's research goes no farther than what's online. What's online is incredibly rich, though a lot of people don't really have search skills that proficiently bring in the biggest hauls of information. But there is still plenty of information of various kinds that is not online, and the quality of research that aims to do more than just rehash a Wikipedia entry is measurably enhanced if someone can draw upon a sizeable base of published as well as online information.

Ah fuck that. Schools, particularly anything a cut above community college, have better libraries for research than any city library, not to mention as has been said, they can't get the funding they need to be truly useful. I see you all disagreeing, but you're disagreeing on bad points. If you're telling me it's for research, I'd imagine most people who have to do research either 1) do it all online (bad or not isn't the point) or 2) do it at their schools library, which is often huge and book-centric instead of media-centric.

Who are these 45 year old poor people that need to do research, Sky? If you want to argue that books should be made to poor people, I'm gonna argue that health care should and we should destroy the public library system and get rid of literacy socialism and replace it with health socialism. Why? Because it's a stupid goddamn point for you to be arguing. If you're gonna make a case, make it. Don't try to make a nebulous one around a molehill of BS.

Edit: Gah, page bump:


You used yourself as an example (piss poor argument, and one where you probably could've found the information on the internet faster) and gave a bunch of reasons people use public computers. Doesn't really sound like things BOOKS would be needed for.

Not everyone in America can afford a computer or Internet access. Nor can they afford to go to even community college. Or they live in East Bumblefuck and can't get broadband and may be lucky to get dialup.

As much as I love the Internet, it can't serve every need unless we start issuing kids computers straight from the womb.

(http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3494/lionfacepalm.jpg)

I'm willing to listen to the argument.


I think that's why they put them in the library.


Last I checked, schools were doing just that. Many high-school kids are now issued laptops.

For the record, it is sad that things like library, schools and education are always getting cut for other, more important things, like bonuses and wars.
Also, as an aside, my entire career is based off self teaching and gained knowledge thought the internet. Librarys carry nothing relevant to my current job, and I hold no degrees (A regret of mines, yes). School of hard knocks and all that. Sure i may be deficient in spelling and grammar (Hi!), but I'm not doing badly at all considering where I came from and what i had to do to get here. I am also, still correcting work done by said degree holders, in fact its about 60% of my job. Fix the dam smart people who get paid more than me mistakes. Dicks.

So am I, if he was willing to make one.

It's true, not everyone can. But we're not talking about libraries at this point, we're talking about free netcafes without food and drink.

Right, but if the Internet is such a huge resource for research, people who can't afford net cafes, or their own computers need a place to research stuff. Why not the library? I look at the Internet as a gigantic library without any content filter. The Internet in a library can vastly expand that library's offerings. It is a way to keep libraries relevant in changing times.

As for "you should get the Internet in your schools" absolutely you should. You been to some rural schools in shit-poor areas lately? Yeah, they don't have computers made this century either unless an angel donated them. The school systems have the same funding problems as the libraries.

:groan:

If you were responding to me. I think I said basically the same thing, if I didn't. Well, I agree.

No one is going to disagree, you're saying perfectly agreeable obvious shit.

Unfortunately, libraries don't have the funding to keep up with all the ways they're expanding. That's the core issue and it's getting to the point where they're essentially unfundable and there's no question that they're one of the loss-leaders in terms of payoff for the government. And they can't really jack up late fees to something unreasonable nor can they just charge you if you're late without you coming in. All in all, it's a poorly designed business (and, by the way, it IS business) and it's not shocking that states are willing to shut them down.

Lots of good points in here, some bad. 

Literacy rates are terrible, yes.  That's not all the libraries fault.  Our education system is not getting it done and 'no child left behind' also means 'no child gets ahead'.  Ultimately, it's the school's responsibility.  Libraries are helping where they can, but it's a band aid for a gunshot wound.  But that's for another argument. 

Our Library system (Columbus Metropolitan, #1 ranked for 2 of the last 5 years on HALPR) focuses on three target audiences:

1.  Young Minds - Homework help centers in 16+ of our 21 buildings, Bookmobiles, Ready to Read programs, Storytimes, Teen lock-ins, Volunteen programs
2.  Power Users - People using the system a LOT, reserving items across our floating collection and/or Interlibrary loans, holding meetings
3.  Virtual Users - Tech/PC users

1 and 2 are pretty straight forward.  In a city that just closed it's rec centers, we're the last line for urban youth before they get pushed into the streets.  I speak with kids on a daily basis about homework - asking if they finished or helping if I get time away from customers.  Some of these kids have nobody else in their lives that will help them in this area.  So we give them a place to focus and it's making a difference. 

Our virtual users are what you are all talking about.  Some of you seem to think everyone has access to a computer where ever they are, but that's not the case.  I work in a small, urban branch with 24 public computers that ALWAYS have a wait time (sometimes the wait is over 2 hours).  Every day people are sent to the library by any number of companies or public systems that need to use our computers.  Trying to get a phone setup when you've got poor credit?  Every day I have people that have to come in to do online applications for that stuff.  Unemployment?  Yep, that's got to be done online now too. 

Hell, we're even running a Job Help Center right now, every single day just to help people get a leg up.  I'm teaching a seminar about resume building next week, for example.  Other seminars next week include how to job search and interview tips.  You can't even apply for 98% of jobs right now without a computer.

It's simply absurd to say we can do without them. 
 

Let's just tax soda and use the revenue to keep our free book rental stores open  :why_so_serious:

I don't know if you're being snarky, but I'd sign that.

What?! Tax dollars to keep communal centers of knowledge and learning open to the general public? Preposterous, what possible benefit could that be to our society as a whole. Soon the arguement will be why require literacy at all since we have the technology to function without it. The beneficial programs my local library offered when growing up was nothing short of awesome.

Schild's argument, which is a good one and people have ignored, is that literacy programs don't have very much to do with libraries or library programs.

Literacy education programs for adults (including alot of English as a Second Language type stuff) gets funded as literacy programs by both state and Fed, generally through some kind of umbrella org like the old Literacy Volunteers of America or the new Proliteracy umbrella org. 

Libraries generally do run some joint events with literacy orgs, or share some of their space with tutors, but the bulk of literacy education has very little to do with libraries.


In general, funding for adult literacy is handled through specific programs for adult literacy, some workforce retraining grants, and the various ESL/citizenship and civics grants.  Children's literacy gets run through school programs or through children's literacy programs that funnel through non-profits specifically set up to promote children's literacy.  Not through libraries.


Going back to the original story:  it's flat-out a political ploy of the "OMG think of the Children!" variety.  I've been on the board of a literacy org for the last five years, and each year New York State has done the exact same thing to literacy programs.....  just so someone can make political hay off of the issue and get a few nice photo ops and press releases from it.  The funding is usually back up to what was originally requested in the next version of the budget bill.

If you're talking about local branches, sure.  The central branches for cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston, or DC (:oh_i_see:) are nothing to laugh at though.

Once you discount the medical/law collections (in the case of UCLA), the lack of bums, and the cute girls, there's really no reason for me to make the trek to Westwood (UCLA) or the Eastside (CSULA) instead of just going to the Central Library.

Are you replying to me? Huh?



Are you honesty saying that someone can't find that sort of information on the internet?

I'm not saying some people don't use local libraries for those things, I'm just saying that I don't see how they are things that local libraries offer that people can't get elsewhere.

I love local libraries. But since I left high school I have only used them for getting out books that I haven't wanted/been able to buy myself. I use them for recreational reading but not much else. They are rarely comprehensive enough for any other purposes. Granted I am still a uni student. But once I finish I can still be a member of the uni libraries, I can access the state library, I have a computer, and so on and so forth.

Maybe there are some differences because I life in Australia, I don't know, but I don't really see how much libraries offer directly form an educational standpoint. Which is not to say I don't value them and don't think they serve an important role, I just don't think they're as important for 'research' and some of the other things you are mentioning.

I'm only talking about local branches. As someone who lived in DC for 5 years, pretty sure there are some libraries there I'd like not to see shut down. :awesome_for_real:

Sure. That's why we've been cut every year for the last ten and currently at 1991 funding levels, not adjusted for inflation.Yes. That's what I'm saying. Well, you might find some half-assed info, and occasionally I find some good stuff. Problem is most people are very inept at gauging what is good information from reliable sources, which is where having information professionals comes in. Also, again using my personal case because IANAL(ibrarian): I found some decent info for tuck-pointing mortar after digging around on the internet for an hour or two, but the most informative info that actually helped me with the project was from books with long and detailed information and tons of step-by-step photos laid out in a professional format. Even so, a librarian probably could've gotten me to better websites.

And the chilton's, I don't see how the internet could be better. Would you print out the entire manual? Assuming you have a computer, printer and internet connection. If you don't, printing at most places (even here) can get spendy at the levels of a thick manual. Or just check out the chilton's for your truck and lay it on the hood while you work.See what you did there? Also, do you read a lot? I read a lot of both fiction and non-fiction. If you read a lot and aren't wealthy, you should love libraries. I guess I can understand the ignorance if you don't read anything beyond a Prima guide.

Really, do you guys seriously not understand how important free access of information for everyone is important? That's like redstate levels of  :uhrr: :ye_gods:

While those things CAN be found elsewhere, what we are saying is that some people CAN'T find them elsewhere because: 1) don't have the money for a computer, 2) have crappy Internet if at all, 3) don't know how to use a computer, 4) or are just plain poor and can't afford any of that including buying the books.

You seem awfully paranoid lately.  Are New Age Travelers sneaking into your garage and stealing your lawnmower?  That would make me paranoid.  Or, at least, very nervous.  Anyway, no, I'm not replying to you.

My brother has become a stoner and his friends are at my house every night of the week smoking... maybe that has something to do with it?

Sky, you're making this thread ironic with your selective discussion points.

Ok. Point to the place on the doll where I give a fuck.

 :drill: :drillf:

There's also essentially nothing to guarantee that information one finds on the internets is actually correct.  At least with a book you have some semblance of fact checking and peer review (although not universally true, the chances are certainly much much higher).

Didn't Steven Colbert prove this point rather directly? (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/72347/july-31-2006/the-word---wikiality)

Shit, I could put up a page that says you don't need to claim tips as income on your W2 form...just because it's online doesn't mean it's smart to follow that advice.  But where would we go to double check that what we research online is correct?

I wish such a place existed....

Baby carrots are trying to turn me gay.