Re: OT: Public libraries

Our little local library is pretty busy. People browse and check out books and DVDs. There are also various classes, meetings, lectures. It has copy machines, scanners, stuff like that mostly free too.

It's also the place where the Silk Road guy was nabbed.

She found townspeople will turn to a good library for just about every service under the sun, even ones that aren't really appropriate, like resume-writing and tax preparation! "Sorry we don't do that, here."

Being a town librarian in a well-trafficked library is a bit like working a generalized help desk, where people look for support with all sorts of life-problems, often but not always related to information gathering. She found it easier to think of herself as some kind of "information broker" in the public service in that role, rather than as someone who specializes in just books.

For better and worse, on bad days being the help desk can be as lousy as any customer tech support job.

But along those lines large library science conferences these days seem to spend more time talking about AI than they do about the printed word.

What less expensive space is there to store books on a timescale of

Modern librarians don't tend to see that as "perversion" it's part of the plan. THE COMMUNIST PLAN!! just kidding..

Ya, towns tend to spend money on what their residents and their governance values. I believe most everywhere the public library system tends to operate under the purview of the town/county/municipality government, so if it sucks for reasons other than lack of funding, you know where the buck finally stops.

Cases of nepotism and mismanagement of town libraries happen even in enlightened MA though, and there is drama and in fighting like any other industry. Ineffectual management probably gets the boot quicker in wealthier towns up here compared to some other places, though.

She did her time in the public service and she now works for a major research-oriented university and makes near six figures in the academia-support role (a number of big schools have huge research libraries), she don't need my "support", lol..

Closing a public library tends to go down badly with the community. The authorities have however hit upon the money saving scheme of making all their librarians redundant and replacing them with unpaid volunteers. (under threat of closure in no-one does volunteer)

Book check-in out is now all self service robotic and no one remaining still has any true librarian research skills. Magnetic tags in the spine of the books and NFC loops at the doors do the rest.

Last time I got something difficult on loan from the national collection was just before lockdown. It came in on the day that they were told to lock up. Chief librarian gave me a call to say if you want it you have to come now and collect immediately - we won't be opening our doors tomorrow. Lockdown also meant I obtained electronic access and enough expertise to track down all but the most exotic reference sources.

It was a 3 week loan that lasted 6 months. The complex returns paperwork was ignored when they reopened. It was throw it in this big box with everything else and we will look at it in about a week when any Covid viruses have time expired.

It is unusual requests for rare books that cause most trouble for the willing unpaid volunteers. No longer affects me I do my own.

That is quite well used in mine as are the 3D printers mainly for schools use (we repair them from time to time, likewise their computers). It hosts a "Repair Cafe" every other month shared with another venue we can fix (or condemn) most things. I do computers and mobile phones we have wood workers, and several automation specialists.

Most amusing recent ones were a huge parasol 20' across, a full size artist's dummy and next month we are promised a skeleton to mend.

There are plenty of people in and out. Just no paid employees any more.

eBooks here and eJournals took off spectacularly during lockdown. Print magazines never recovered our public library used to have a decent range

- now they are online only. Same for streaming over internet vs DVDs.

Being run by well meaning retired volunteers who are basically there to open up and lock up again but have little or no training in library research work. Company where my wife used to work did away with their research librarians (skilled researchers with domain knowledge and decades of experience winnowing wheat from chaff). That was a big mistake for them. Paid for research archives charge for each document downloaded and the scientists grabbed everything their improperly formatted searches threw up. Fees for that exceeded librarians salaries! (to say nothing of their time wasted fighting the various specialised search engines which have the most arcane cryptic syntax I have ever seen)

i.e. people that don't ask for much and can be pushed around.

There are no shortage of library science-degreed "real librarians" willing to work in a public library for modest wages. But they tend to fall into two camps: women who also have their "Mrs. degree" and (as you implied earlier) have their engineer husband as the primary bread winner. But there's only a glut of those in very affluent areas like say Cape Cod.

And also younger freshly-minted degree-holders looking to improve their resume; library science isn't like comp sci they don't start headhunting even outstanding students from prestigious schools for cushy jobs at FAANG corporations out the door.

There are roads to well-paid jobs but newbies are expected to pay their dues and working full time at a public library is sorta like the library science equivalent of a combat tour on the resume, particularly if they can point to concrete numbers "Increased patronage 30%. Re-organized media inventory for maximum efficiency. Implemented techniques to..." etc..

But some towns aren't going to like hires like that either, they know their value and can't be pushed around, and will likely be on to better things sooner-or-later.

We use our library mainly for the following:

(1) Conveniently, most of the libraries in our state are on the same catalog system, so I can put holds on books from the university and other places, and get them shipped for free to my library. I use this and ILL to occasionally get technical books, like math or electronics, which are usually not in my library collection. Books in our state system can be checked out (with renewals) for up to three months, so this saves me buying a lot of otherwise very expensive books.

(2) My wife checks out a lot of DVDs for the kids to watch, and occasionally a movie for us. This is because we do not subscribe to any streaming services.

(3) Each visit my wife will check out about 40 picture books for the little kids to read. I can't tell you how many mind-numbing childrens books I've read over the last few years, at bedtime.

(4) The local chess club and some chess competitions meet at the library.

Personally, I refuse to use any DRM or JavaScript based Ebook services, but my wife does occasionally. She reads a lot of paper fiction as well, usually checked-out from the library.

There are a number of things I really don't like about libraries, but since it is there that is what we use it for.

One of the benefits of library computers is access to the catalog. Most technical stuff or 2nd language content is in the stacks at a central branch or even in different cities. This reduces 'shelf browsing' considerably, if you know what you're looking for, even for fiction or 'other' entertainment. Hence the 'reserved' service use.

My neighborhood tends to be both migrant and immigrant - scrambling to save every cent - so library services and hardware may be the only ones available that don't require you to buy something, just to sit down. Also a quiet place for students and gig 'workers' to do their stuff, via wi-fi.

Time-limited E-books, music and video files require extra hardware, but they're cataloged much the same. This is useful for families without extensive internet/cable entertainment data packages.

Being warm, dry and public, libray washrooms and seating will always be in demand by those with few alternatives.

Users feeling guilty about taking advantage of the services should also feel free to donate, when they can.

RL

Anything that requires home hardware or internet payments is shifting the publicly costed structure onto the backs of a public that can not always afford it.

It's the reason public libraries were developed by altruists in the first place.

RL

In most advanced industrial countries health care is free. You don't want poor people to get sick and infect everybody else, so you bribe them to go into hospital when they are sick and infectious with free treatment when they are merely sick.

Potable water and food get charged for because if they are free people will waste them. Education is free because we want everybody to able to read and write, and those people who can learn to do more can do more for society if they are encourage to develop those extra skills. The capacity to succeed in further education isn't all that predictable, and some people need to learn a lot of irrelevant stuff before they can work out what they are really good at. Win Hill dropped out of a Ph.D. program in chemical physics to move into a masters program in electronics, and I finished a Ph.D. in physical chemistry before fully moving into electronics.

Primary and secondary education tends to be compulsory.

Some people are functionally illiterate, even if they can read and write and post here.

I would say the state-wide catalog system is the biggest feature for me. Most of the stuff I want is at the university library, and it is difficult and expensive to get good parking there. Also, many of the biggest and most well-funded libraries in our state are in South-Central Alaska, which is 300 miles from where I live. So it is pretty handy to be able to get any of those books shipped to my library for free, and then take advantage of the same renewal policy — one month checkout with up to two renewals. I checkout a lot of engineering, science, and math books this way.

ILL is nice too, though the checkout times are much shorter usually, like three weeks and no renewal.

Our library here in San Francisco checks out books and vids for two weeks. But they automatically renew them up to six times! I get reminder emails every renewal.

Where do you live? I had a girlfriend in Juneau once. It was one of those relationships where only the airlines came out ahead.

Hence they should continue to serve those without home computers or expensive internet service contracts.

I'm not discussing health care, civic infrastructure, food marketing , government education policy or etceteras; only the current function of public libraries ( in light of their immediate conventional purpose ).

Libraries, by themselves, don't NEED a public, and for millenia did not serve them in any direct manner. There are many libraries today that have no obligation to allow your (or anybody elses) access .

RL