Yep. This comment at metafilter has been discussed here before, I think, but it's worth linking again:

http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210

Thank you for linking this. The main article being discussed made me think "okay, so administrivia, book stuff, etc. Actually doesn't sound so bad". This link, however, made me realize how emotionally draining the library can be for everyone involved.

another fun fact: librarians make change. For example, librarian in Warsaw - 450$ a month. 520$ is somehow considered a "very good pay".

Society can be such a beautiful thing. But more and more it appears to be a beautiful thing destroying itself.

To be fair, when I was a kid, we didn't have internet. We only had library, and computer journals, the paper kind. Nowadays, for research papers, read arxiv. For news read hackernews. For learning stuff, Google, stack overflow. Fiction? Kindle app.

Unless you're poor. Then you don't have a computer.

That's amusing as I posted this article, I am homeless and I have a laptop, tablet and smartphone.

Yes, I spend my days at the library to get charge for my devices, free Wi-Fi and access to public PCs. But I am dirt poor and all my earned income comes via the internet.

/PSA

Out of curiosity, how do you earn your money via internet ? Do you make apps for people ?

I do freelance writing and I run a bunch of blogs.

What do you do for securing them?

A lot more poor people have a computer today than ever before. Nothing illustrates this better than seeing the homeless on their iPhones using the Starbucks wifi to access the Internet.

This is true, and a very, very good thing I think. But it's the prosaic stuff (how do I claim this? Where do I actually look for information? What information will help me? Etc) where having a real person sit and help you is incredibly important.