I agree that they've sort of lost the plot by taking this digital lending stuff seriously.
So instead of the Seattle Library, it would be the some big tech nonprofit at best that would lisence content in bulk.
ARPANET was gracefully turned over, for the most part, to the commons, as was GPS. Public libraries are a millenium old as a concept [1], but only half a century (EDIT: millenium) old as a continuous practice [2]. We're not at the tail end of a collective-action halcyon; we're in the centre of it.
I don't think a latest bestseller should be in a library in the first place. Maybe a couple of years later when the hype has died down if it's still a good book, they can have it for the few people who want it for what it is rather than being trendy. But I never expect libraries to have anything new and fashionable. Movies and music too are always old or obscure, at least where I am.
It's funny that these artificial licensing constraints for software seem much more natural and acceptable. Especially software where the complete thing is distributed for free but you have to buy a license to activate it. It's even more in-you-face with network licenses where every computer in an organization can have and use a copy but you have to wait for somebody else to finish using theirs before you can use it on your computer. Oh, and then maintenance fees, and lapsed maintenance fee fees, and different prices depending on whether you buy a network or node-locked license.
Just because some members of the community need power tools doesn’t mean we all benefit from that. We all benefit from police, fire, ambulance, and roads — we all don’t benefit from free power tools. The free market is designed to serve the demands of the community for things like power tools and books. If we are worried about the poor who absolutely need to read the unauthorized biography of Princess Kate — that’s why we have charities.
Does society benefit from free access to a bestselling thriller novel? Not really. And let’s be real, the vast majority of people at the public library aren’t checking out philosophy or advanced calculus books. More like Dan Brown and Taylor Swift. This idea that public libraries are fonts of societal advancement might have been true in 1924, but certainly not in 2024.
If people want libraries, then a private entity could fill the need. Charge memberships to people that want to use that resource. Kind of like Kindle Unlimited. Or a gym.
Cutting these sorts of programs would result in more money in people’s pockets each month — so with that extra money, people could go to a second hand bookstore and buy whatever bestseller they want. Or rent whatever tool they need from a rental shop. If such a rental shop doesn’t exist and there is a demand, then someone can start one!
The need for physical libraries has passed just as the need for “public” radio and TV has passed. The internet has made those concepts as archaic as carrying coins.
I know many of the HN crowd seems to think the government should be this omnipresent entity that caters to a person’s every need from birth to death, but I have an extreme mistrust of government especially after the totalitarianism (and lies) we saw during Covid. I also resent paying high taxes when watching those taxes go to literal nonsense. Here is $900 billion worth of examples: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Festivus-202...
Furthermore, the fact that the EU actually regulates bottle caps for me, is just a bridge too far.
I am not opposed to libraries or free tool rental — I am opposed to paying for them with our public tax money. If people want those things, then band together and spend your own money doing it. Ironically enough, I’d even donate to such a cause.
As per tools, you benefit from having a community that doesn’t needlessly spend on tool duplication or rental, which ultimately concentrates local wealth. But that’s an economic argument when the real one is that it’s a desirable service for cost, convenience and community spirit.
The discoverability of new books is excellent, librarians routinely make a selection of books on some topics, it may be a generic one "history", specific one "important people in history" which are way better than any other system that tries to recommend me books
Last, but not least, libraries are on of the few remaining places "for the people, by the people". You're not expected to pay anything, you can walk in any, take a book, read it, sit down and relax. It's also a place where a lot of students can go to study in silence, I can't think of many other places which offer a similar quietitude.
It would be a disservice to reduce libraries to "places where you can read Taylor swift books" (not that there's anything wrong with reading Taylor swift or Spare), losing libraries would mean loosing one of the remaining "third places" we have in our always more disconnect society
Lol, roads. Taxes should only cover public walkways and public transit between walkable areas.
And I'm not even sure about sidewalks. First, they require roads, and we already tossed those. I mean sure, we all use roads, but do we really all benefit equally from every road? I've never even driven on half the streets in my town, but my tax dollars still pay for their upkeep. It's madness!
And don't even get me started on sidewalks. I choose to drive everywhere, so why should a single penny of my hard-earned money go toward maintaining sidewalks for pedestrians? Walking is a personal choice. If you want somewhere to walk, go build your own private walking path. Bootstraps, people!
Oh, and public parks? Talk about a bridge too far. Without kids or dogs in the house, I never use them. Why am I still paying for other people's kids and pets to have a place to play? Back in my day, we entertained kids and puppies with sticks and stones in our own backyards, and we turned out just fine. If parents and dog owners want parks, they can band together and build their own - on their own dime, of course.
Heck, when you really think about it, even having a public fire department is kind of overstepping. I've never had a fire, so that's a service I've never personally used. Shouldn't each citizen be responsible for putting out their own fires? You could purchase your own hose and hydrant, or for a small fee, subscribe to a privatized firefighting service. Same goes for the military, and borders. If you don't like immigrants, drive them back across the border yourself.
Look, the free market is the answer for all of this. Well, except the corporate subsidies, and bank bailouts, since companies and banks do actually “cater to our every need from before birth to after death.” But definitely for everything else!
Whoa, I don't want to pay for you to walk around, I personally glide inches above the ground.
If you're worried about government spending your tax money, start with the military aka "defense": $857 billion in 2023. From which we citizens benefit through ... (maintaining a global military hegemony, hurrah for us!). A 2% trim in defense funds all libraries in the US with plenty to spare.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/12/11/libraries-in...
Sorry, but you're a bad person. "I got mine, fuck you" makes you a bad person.
A normal, functioning society uses its excess resources to help everyone, including assholes who think they're the most important person on the planet.
One tenth of one percent of your taxes went to teaching a toddler how to read, or teaching a teenager how to fix their bike. Someone who can't afford otherwise rented a DVD to watch with their family and you're mad about that.
You're the worst kind of person, and the entire reason that our society is so sick.
Our species' and society's need for community remains high. Many of us (naive) technophiles predicted the internet would somehow be the best community ever. Perhaps even global.
Oops.
As you know, the internet, esp algorithmic hate machines and social media, destroys community. Our declining public and mental health is just one terrible adverse effect.
The need for libraries, to rebuild and nuture communities, has never been greater.
Alright so NOT public funds, but everyone that wants to take part or that is tacitly endorsing it.. and you would even give happily?
What's the difference with taxes?
I sure wonder how much is spent on public librairies vs the tax cuts companies like Apple get. But surely, we all benefit from multinationals getting tax cuts, aren't we? Much more than from our neighbors having access to books and tools right?
I wonder what your thoughts on government healthcare are. We'd all benefit from it, right?
Your bizarre take is hopefully one of youthful ignorance, but you do know the internet costs money right? Do you also know libraries are a source of internet for people that can't afford it?
I’m also generally happy when people read long-form content outside of school. I’ve certainly been guilty of not reading anything longer than a news article for long stretches.
A side note, there is some sense in the artificial sounds of the ev engines. I'm blind and if not for them, I might be dead in five years, together with many no so attentive people.
I do think it should be entirely optional though.
The auditory feedback is faster and easier to process than visually seeing or physically feeling the car move, I can respond quicker and drive more accurately hence it's safer. It's also easier to notice if something is wrong or strange with the engine.
Consequently, I hate driving quiet cars (sedans especially) and find EVs annoying because they have the high pitched, hard to hear motor whine that takes away some of my attention.
I'm a big fan of alternatives, but have come to realize there often valid reasons why they aren't used.
We have several systems for matching resources to production because there isn't any single way that works best. But it is interesting to try to stretch each model as far as it can, for best results we can get.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "risky"? I can only think of projects that don't yet have a customer. In that case, you just don't build it until there is a customer need for it. Architects don't speculatively design buildings hoping to find a customer who wants it. I think we would be better off if the same was true of software.
I am curious if there is a open source type model for getting a higher return for doing riskier work, as economics would suggest is fair and also helpful.
That is obviously a typical closed source situation, but people find creative solutions.
Not talking about selling services, but somehow compensating for writing the code after the fact, risk adjusted, while keeping the code itself free. Might need a temporarily hybrid license to accomplish this. I.e. the code is obligated to become free, after some fixed license fees have covered the work cost and risk.
This is what labor contracts are for, no? I fulfill my side of the contract (by providing software) and then you fulfill your side of the contact (by providing money), else if I fulfill my side and you do not fulfill yours, I have a legal case against you.
If a book is popular, let the patrons "buy down" their own copy, or else wait behind 90 other people.
There is always bittorrent and filez websites: the real libraries of the digital age.
There are also ... craploads of other worthwhile books you could explore that are not held.
Libraries certainly do this. Might not be at (your suggested) 75/100 rates, but if a physical book is popular, library systems do purchase more copies.
Obviously, since patrons check it out, there is demand for it. Well, so what? There is demand for cocaine and porn; should public libraries offer that?
Demand for something doesn't ipso facto oblige a library to provide it.
Of course demand for something doesn't make it something that should be free.
On the other hand, your arguments against e-libraries are just as vague and lacking in implication.
Libraries promote literacy and/or learning with every book read. Even as a source of entertainment, it promotes a richer culture. All of which does have a total health of society benefit.
Why not? What are your goals of a public library?
Nothing with an expiring license or ongoing fees.
> Limits. You may borrow at any one time, 100 total items per library card, including up to 10 console games and up to 30 DVDs/Blu-rays.
Also, per-borrower limits are different from per-book limits.
A limit of 20 holds for a given e-book means that at most 20 people can wait in a queue for the opportunity to be the next borrower.
Cutting the queue to an arbitrary number does nothing for wait times!
All it does is throw away information about the demand.
If there is a 15 hold limit, and it's fully occupied, we don't know whether the demand for the book is exactly 15, or whether it's actually 45, with an invisible backlog of 30 people having been turned away from being formally registered in the hold queue.
Those waiting to read the book now face an extra hurdle: they must repeatedly play a time-wasting lottery in order to obtain a spot in the queue. Someone who had been trying to get into the queue for weeks can have it sniped away by someone who gets in on the first try.
The only reason for trimming hold queues is if there is some resource problem; like they are running out of space in the database for tracking holds or something.
This may seem surprising, but patron holds are the single biggest factor in rising costs. To maintain reasonable wait times, the Library buys additional licenses of a digital title when patrons place more holds on it. That means that when hundreds of patrons place holds on a single New York Times bestseller, the costs of “buying down the holds” can quickly become astronomical."
How odd - I know it's the licenscing and I can understand the reasoning behind, but at a distance it seems like ritual almost. When they get the e-book, the data is there, and when you hold it, you get a copy, the "original" is untouched, but the library has to act as if it was unavailable.
It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds.