I Have No Words....

[Signe]

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

All Free Library of Philadelphia Customers,

We deeply regret to inform you that without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood branch libraries, regional libraries, or the Parkway Central Library after October 2, 2009.

Specifically, the following will take effect after the close of business, October 2, 2009:

    * All branch and regional library programs, including programs for children and teens, after school programs, computer classes, and programs for adults, will be cancelled
    * All Parkway Central Library programs, including children programs, programs to support small businesses and job seekers, computer classes and after school programs, will be cancelled. We are exploring the possibility of relocating the Philadelphia Author Series programs to other non-library facilities.
    * All library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and other community centers will cease.
    * All community meetings at our branch and regional libraries, and the Parkway Central Library, will be cancelled.
    * All GED, ABE and ESL programs held at Free Library branches will be discontinued, students should contact their teacher to see if other arrangements are being made.

In addition, all library materials will be due on October 1, 2009. This will result in a diminishing borrowing period for books and other library materials, beginning September 11, 2009. No library materials will be able to be borrowed after September 30, 2009.

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

[Khaldun]

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.

[Signe]

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.   

[Khaldun]

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.

[Hawkbit]

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. 

[pxib]

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.

[Khaldun]

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.

[01101010]

people still read books?   
 
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.

[Khaldun]

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.  )

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.

[Sky]

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.

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.

[Sir T]

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

[Ookii]

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

Libraries even!

[schild]

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

Libraries even!

Pointing out the hilarity takes the hilarity away from it.

[Mrbloodworth]

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

Who needs paper?

[Sky]

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

[pxib]

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.

[schild]

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

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.

[Lantyssa]

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

[Cyrrex]

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

[01101010]

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.

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.  

[Sky]

public internet growth over the last 7 years.

Yeah, fuck those poor people.

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.

[pxib]

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.  

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

[IainC]

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

[Righ]

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

They will do fine with trickle-down literacy.

[01101010]

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

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.'

[HaemishM]

lolwut?

[squirrel]

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'.

[Samwise]

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.

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

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.

[caladein]

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 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, 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.

[gryeyes]

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.

[ahoythematey]

Idiocracy is becoming true!  i like money

[lamaros]

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.

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.

[schild]

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.

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

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.

[Signe]

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.

[Sky]

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?

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.