In late October, Jackson County, Ore., re-opened the doors to 15 of its public libraries after a lack of funds had forced them shut on April 6—the largest library closure in U.S. history. However, as patrons returned to the bookshelves in the southern Oregon county, they learned that their libraries are now under private, for-profit management. Oregon suffered a $150… return to article
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Reader Comments (10)Page 1 of 1 pagesGiven the conditions of modern times, libraries are far less essential today. One can simply use the Internet to search and retrieve information, rather than waste time, energy and effort driving to a brick and mortar institution.
That said, i love libraries! But economic realties will determine if they go the way of the horse and buggy.
Posted by wolf on Nov 27, 2007 at 12:23 PM Yes, good point wolf. I think all of the materials that lie within the public domain should be uploaded onto the web, as with a large amount of such stuff that’s on the web now.
Same for out-of-print materials for which we have remaining hard copies. Surely there are tons of material like this in the stacks and archives of libraries all over the world.
I’m sure something can be devised for intellectual property that is still a source of earnings for authors, as with online scientific journals or other periodicals one can subscribe to now, essentially an expanded supply of e-books the consumer would pay for in some fashion. I don’t know exactly how pirating could be prevented, but it could be figured out.
I consider the preservation of knowledge and information (incl. entertaining “info") to be a worthy humanistic mission.
I love libraries too, but in the future maybe they’ll actually look more like internet cafes, or a descendant thereof.
Posted by Kuya on Nov 27, 2007 at 11:06 PM Eventually I feel you’re probably right-- we are headed toward a purely technologically driven information highway. But that makes me frightened of increased control of information a la 1984 or Handmaid’s Tale.
I also worry for the decrease in reading of novels and reputable hard copy resources. What about people who have a difficult time reading pixelated information? And what about how easy it would be for the government, or any other body, to simply make information disappear? Without physical copies being disseminated throughout the public, I fear that there is little to no security.
Perhaps these are the paranoid mumblings of a liberal book lover. But then again, perhaps they are a fair warning.
(And don’t book merit more spending than, say, Haliburton? We spend frivolously on military matters and are far too sparse on the more important matters of education.)
Posted by siameseamazon on Nov 28, 2007 at 3:00 PM and furthermore:
what about people who don’t have the internet? should they be deprived of information?
Posted by siameseamazon on Nov 28, 2007 at 6:09 PM Our society is nowhere near the point where libraries can be replaced with online resources. Even people who have access to the internet frequently have trouble using it and many of the resources currently supplied to library users by local libraries would be unavailable to anyone not able to pay for them. Google and Second Life and all the other toys are lovely to play with and they have improved the reach of libraries and individuals throughout the world but many folks still need help finding and evaluating information a task that the internet is not equipped to do.
Not to mention the fact that your local library is one of the few bastions of intellectual freedom left in this benighted land. Don’t believe me? (I am biased being a librarian myself) ask Michael Moore, Kurt Vonnegut and the folks at EFF. Librarians may wear sensible shoes but they also ask sensible questions and stand up for your rights on a regular basis.
Posted by valstory on Nov 29, 2007 at 7:32 PM The information from the ALA is false, purposefully so. People should not be guided by the ALA’s comments. I am not taking a stand on the underlying issue, merely exposing the ALA’s propaganda.
“‘Libraries tend to reflect the communities they serve,’ says Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association (ALA). ‘[They] respond to community needs and they do so within their budget, but they are not set up to make profit.’”
No, they do not “respond to community needs,” at least not always, as the ALA president implies. For example, when the public and the government of Oak Lawn, IL, tried to remove Playboy Magazine from the Oak Lawn Public Library, the ALA’s top leadership got directly involved to ensure children retained access to the magazine. “I get very concerned when we start hearing people who want to convert this country into a safe place for children,” Judith Krug of the ALA’s “Office for Intellectual Freedom” said. To this day, children of all ages may ask a librarian to photocopy a page range from Playboy despite 94% (or was it 97%) of the community being against this. So no, not all libraries respond to community needs. When community needs conflict with ALA agenda, the ALA often wins.
“Two years later, the ALA council adopted a stance opposing outsourcing, stating that libraries are ‘not a simple commodity’ but ‘are an essential public good’ that should be ‘directly accountable to the public they serve.’”
False. Regarding the Oak Lawn story, an ALA Council member was the person leading the charge to ensure the children remained exposed to Playboy magazine, and he got high fives all around the library world for it, especially from an ALA president and the “Office for Intellectual Freedom.” So the ALA council claiming libraries are “directly accountable to the public they serve” is flat out false; the ALA Council gets directly involved in ensuring local libraries follow ALA policy, not community standards.
Many, many other such stories abound. Like the library that refused (and continues to refuse?) to report library crimes to the police. Does anyone think that library is “directly accountable to the public they serve”?
So when people evaluate the pros and cons of outsourcing library services, they should at least know that the statements of the ALA have been in the past and will likely continue to be misleading and self serving, and purposefully so.
Posted by SafeLibraries.org on Nov 30, 2007 at 6:46 AM Libraries are not internet cafes, although many do, indeed, have them on site! In fact, the internet cannot replace the human element in librarianship, which is a liberal profession, not a clerkship nor a purely technological occupation. I defy anyone to find current fiction on line without having to pay for it. I challenge everyone to do a high level search of the existing sources or how to locate them without either having a research degree or else being a librarian beside them.
People need a bit of guidance in the tricky and ever-changing world of information media. It is complicated, because it is not a unified system: each vendor has a baseline program or programs and they are modified by the purchaser. Librarians do not spend their time sharpening pencils and devising ways to make more rules about cell phones or how to make the catalog more hard to manipulate.
All professional librarians have at least an MLIS or MLS and most academic librarians have an additional subject MA or even PhD. Library directorship is one of the most “political” offices one can hold, being forced to uphold the fine line between censorship and public service, facing eternal budget challenges, and dealing with the public. It ain’t all put on the sweater and Birkenstocks and then learn to “sssh with authority,” by any means.
Librarians are forced to be de facto baby sitters, adult sitters, quasi-social workers as well as being expected to be an “expert” on every issue from the IRS code to abortion providers in the area. No program can do what librarians do, and that is provide professional service.
Librarians are grossly underpaid according to their skills and education as a rule—especially in public libraries. It says a lot about a society values when a football coach can live in the nicest neighborhood in town with only a BS and a librarian in a studio somewhere where crack is sold, but such is the case.
There are several models of library selection, one of which is the vendor model, another is the selector model, where the person doing the selection attempts to match the needs and wants of the community yet provide a modicum of diversity in the selections. I defy anyone to do that daily when a vendor is doing the decisions—it is rather obvious that “buy low, sell high” is one of the main points of capitalism, and frankly, the library has no place as an Ayn Rand anti-collective Buchfest.
The ALA’s positions are very “liberal” to the outsider, due to we members
insisting upon a strict code of ethics unique to us, and that includes privacy and anti-censorship. Anti-censorship does not mean that we dole out hard core porn to 5 year olds, not by any means. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find much porn per se in one’s public library.The idea that the internet could or can replace the library is frankly ludicrous. The library “as place” is a current area of research within our community and I advise anyone interested in the theme to pursue further reading on it. Most of the literature won’t be on the internet, alas, but will most probably be on an academic database or else on the shelves! You will have to then make a trip to the library to read them.
The library is a part of the “Greater Academy” in my view and as such, this means a face-to-face presence, not a face-to-monitor one alone. There is a place for the internet in libraries, most certainly, but one must have a modicum of filtering ability to ascertain what are vanity sites, partisan sites, or viable learned sites. This skill is not taught in schools, but by librarians. Those who think the internet can replace libraries might as well buy programs to teach their children and get rid of that pesky twelve years guaranteed unionized baby sitting and socialization that parents have outsourced to the schools.
Neal M. Hughes, BA, MA, MLIS
Posted by nealmhughes on Dec 2, 2007 at 10:16 PM Hi, Y’all !
For profit libraries? Are you serious? Then again republicans are in the White House.
As a teacher, and as a student, I find the library to be one of the most important tools I have. When my students use it to complete their term papers, they also understand its value. In fact, my town’s library also features a wide variety of periodicals, music, and movies. All of it’s free, and all one has to do is fill out a simple form.
In addition, given the proper guidance, anyone can obtain a fine education from their library (think Matt Damon’s line in Good Will Hunting). In fact, years ago, Utne Reader hailed libraries as one the Seven Sustainable Wonders of the World.
Given its benefits, why would anyone want to ultimately wreck something that good? CORPORATE GREED! Somewhere, someone has figured out that there is a lot of money to be made in privatizing yet another public trust. This is the same reasoning that nearly destroyed mass transit and why its nearly impossible to find a payphone nowadays.
nealmhughes,
The idea of privatization has been uttered. the demon has revealed itself. Like school vouchers, this will be an idea the right will throw out every time they want to cut services in order to give rich people another tax cut. Sorry, but you’re going to have a fight on your hands from now on.
Posted by Aunty Rightwing on Dec 5, 2007 at 5:34 PM I can’t see how anyone can determine that a library is not an essential government service. If the day comes when you need to know something, that is what the library is for. If you want to keep your democracy, that is what the library is for, because if you are not informed, the democracy is flawed.
Personally, I find the library an essential resource for being informed. Their selection of books far exceeds what you even find at the book store. And it is available to everyone. The internet is great, but it is still no substitute for library services.
Posted by jedinvest on Dec 10, 2007 at 10:41 AM I have often used the library to access the Internet—not the other way around. Public libraries also provide something else—interaction with living, breathing humans instead of a machine.
Posted by meldonna on Dec 19, 2007 at 3:17 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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