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A comment on The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds. Parent comment

Re:The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @01:39AM (#40128858)
> People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library

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Re:The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds by markatto on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @02:12AM (#40129012)
A half century? Surely that must be a typo?
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Re:The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds by geraldwhen on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @05:22AM (#40130077)
Why? People have been illiterate for most of human history. So even if libraries existed, they could not be used.
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Re:The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds by _djo_ on Tuesday April 23, 2024 @06:35AM (#40130344)
I think the OP meant ‘half a millennium’.
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