I am a big believer in public libraries, seeing them as one of the great egalitarian institutions, enabling anyone to gain access to the world of information and entertainment even if they have no money. But for precisely that reason, the rapacious capitalists in the US dislike them, since in their view the idea that something should be offered free to everyone is anathema. It is part of their effort to undermine access to what are clearly social goods, such as universal free health care and free public education.
So defenders of libraries need to have all the arguments to combat the capitalists who use social conservatives to attack libraries because they have offerings that do not conform to their personal prejudices.
Ashlie D. Stevens writes that the Chicago Public Library system has introduced a novel idea. At the bottom of each check out receipt, it tells the user how much money they saved by using the library and not buying the items.
One afternoon I came home with “Magic Is Dead: My Journey Into the World’s Most Secretive Society of Magicians,” “Village School” and “Cold Comfort Farm,” a stack suggesting either eclectic tastes or a person throwing darts at a bookshelf. Shortly afterward, I received the standard email from the library listing my new acquisitions and their due dates.
Then, underneath the administrative business, came a little piece of information I had somehow never noticed before: You just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!
I stared at this. My first thought was not, “What a compelling demonstration of the economic value of municipal services.”
My first thought was: I want that number higher.
I took a screenshot and sent it to my sister, who lives in another state.
“Oh, that’s satisfying,” she replied. “I wish my library did that.”
She was right. Somewhere inside me, a tiny rewards-program customer had been activated.
After that, I started browsing the library website differently: less like a catalog, more like a streaming service with unusually eccentric licensing agreements. Did I need the complete box set of “Nip/Tuck”? Maybe. A Blu-ray collection of British noir? Quite possibly. What about both movies called “The Illusionist” — the bittersweet French animated one about an aging magician and the Edward Norton one in which he is also, confusingly, a magician?
If the library adds up all the savings of all its users, the number it arrives at would be a powerful and tangible demonstration of how important libraries are to people and communities. I am going to suggest this idea to the two local libraries that I frequent.
I own a lot of books. But many of them, including the one I am currently reading, were first borrowed from the library and then, while reading them, I decided that I wanted to own them for future reference or other reasons.
on the other hand, wrong person sees this and is convinced in the opposite direction. lost profit! was supposed to fuel the economy! by god, take that number and multiply it by the number of people using the library, it’s so extreme.
these thanks to anti-ai people going hog-wild for copyright expansion, no small amount of the anti-library crowd will be left-leaning book authors. good times.
Yeah, me too.
However, I don’t go to the local library because it is a great egalitarian institution, although it is.
I go there at least once a week because it is fun and I like to visit the library and check out books and magazines.
I currently have three magazines and one novel checked out.
It isn’t just checking out free books and magazines.
People who are homeschooling their kids use the library as an important resource.
Our library has a bank of internet computers that a lot of low income and homeless people can use to write up a resume, look for jobs and housing, and everything else that is online in our society these days.
Old people in nursing homes visit the library because it is something that they can still do to get out.
Kids and teenagers go there because it is an all ages place they can go to.
Our local library is partially supported by a bond levy and that bond levy has so far been approved by the voters for decades. Which means it is widely popular in the community.
Meanwhile, locally, a country supervisor wants to privatize the country libraries. This all started because a library put up a pride month display. The supervisor claimed that pride month is political and the library took down the display.
In the UK, it has been suggested that the same be done for medical bills. The NHS is free to use at point of service, but imagine if, upon leaving hospital, you were given a receipt describing the actual cost of treatment if you had been in America.
Fun fact: Public libraries as we know them were invented by a rapacious capitalist in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
My usual reading rate is above 100 books per year, maybe 90% from public libraries, and the rest from new or second hand bookstores. I haven’t estimated how much money I’ve saved, because I’m not reading the books for money.
A good reason to visit a library is Oodi, which happens to be within walking distance from my home.
https://oodihelsinki.fi/en/services/
Not just passive reading, but also active content creation. Including video studios and 3D printers.
how’s the weather in argentina mi nazi amiga? from the times you said you wanted the human species extinct in my comments i presumed maybe you’d taken your own life since the last time i saw you, but here you are dropping your unctuous peter lorre voice in someone else’s cut. congrats on continuing to be alive.
Is “Tuly psychotic” better or worse than bog-standard psychotic?
My local library in Alberta has been doing this for years, a recent receipt showed a saving of over $4,000 this year and $32,000 since I started using the library.
No Respect @#7,
Your comment was unnecessarily rude in tone and ad hominem.
I tried to email you in private to express my concern and to request that you do not do in the future but the email was returned saying that no such address existed. So I have to assume that you gave a false email address.
Hence I have deleted your comment.
@Silentbob
In the USA, maybe. Carnegie built libraries in in the US from 1883 to 1929. The first public library in Australia was the Australian Subscription Library, founded in 1826, though the subscription fees would have prevented many people from using it, and women were only admitted in 1845. In 1853 it became the Australian Free Library, and was open to all free of charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Subscription_Library
I’d be surprised if there weren’t other earlier examples elsewhere.
However, what is now the Maritime Museum of Tasmania was originally a Carnegie library.
@Bébé Mélange
I don’t know whether the same applies in the US, but in Australia and a number of other countries, there is a public lending right scheme that compensates the copyright holder for sales lost due to public library lending.
https://www.arts.gov.au/publications/public-lending-right-plr-australian-lending-rights-elrplr-claimant-registrationsubmission-eligible-title-claims
“The Library of Alexandria was not the first library of its kind.[3][11] A long tradition of libraries existed in both Greece and in the ancient Near East.[12][3] The earliest recorded archive of written materials comes from the ancient Sumerian city-state of Uruk in around 3400 BC, when writing had only just begun to develop.[13]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
prl@11,
Yes, in the UK an act permitting town councils to establish free public libraries was passed in 1850 and amended to make it easier to do so in 1855. 25 had established them by 1860. But Carnegie was certainly a great library philanthropist (as well as a rapacious capitalist). I lived for a while in Dunfermline, his home town, although for most of that time the Carnegie library there (the first he funded, opening in 1883) was undergoing renovation.
“The man who dies rich, dies disgraced” -- Andrew Carnegie