Should Public Libraries Become Hacker Spaces?

ptorrone writes "Public libraries — the availability of free education for all — represent the collective commitment of a community to their future. They symbolize what is most important, a commitment to educating the next generation. The role of a public library should also adapt over time, and that time is finally here. It's time to plan how we're going to build the future and what place public libraries have, should have, or won't have. MAKE's latest article encourages everyone to start talking about one of our great resources, the public library, and its future."

Comments

Yes

[Junior J. Junior III]

Libraries do not have enough legal expenses already, and have ample over-budget to support this initiative.

Re:Yes

[willda]

Really? I beg to differ. We in Ohio have taken cuts for the last 10 or more years, yet we are expected to do more with less and less. We provide everything that other government agencies don't want to provide. "Let's close down the jobs & family Services offices...we'll send them to the library. They have lots of staff to help our clients....." Yeah, right. I wish we had all of the resources that people "think" that we have.

Re:Yes

[TaoPhoenix]

Sorry, I think you got whooshed!

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe it's not sarcasm!

Re:Yes

[rtb61]

It seems perfectly reasonable for public libraries to become internet cafes, providing free shared internet services for those that can not afford it. This in conjunction with normal book services. The books definitely need to remain with people relying more than ever upon digital services, public libraries could become a haven for knowledge in the event of sustained power failure.

It is never about what society can afford, as elements within society will deem that society can afford nothing but to service them and damn everyone else (narcissists and sociopaths). It is about what society values and requires that it members contribute too, in order to remain a part of that society.

Whilst the opportunity no longer exists to exile the narcissists and sociopaths to the barbaric regions of the planet away from civilised people that share and care, we must still remember the lessons from the past and learn to isolate them from positions of control, governance and influence.

Re:Yes

[silanea]

It means that you mistook a sarcastic or ironic statement for a serious one. The GP certainly agrees with you that libraries are already understaffed, overburdened and severely short of budget.

Re:Yes

[slim]

... as in the sound something makes as it goes right over your head.

Re:Yes

[natehoy]

Good libraries seek relevance in all things, and are relevant in so many things other than books. Don't limit your mission.

Sure, it's hard work, but who else is going to do it? The schools? They're already mired in political and religious wrangling. They're trying to play the role of parent and teacher. They're already the subject of unfunded mandates that conflict with their mission. They're already burdened with parental indifference, community budget-cutting, and federal mandates for unrealistic performance in things that aren't actually helping kids love to learn.

The kind of people who are attracted to the library are, by and large, the kind of people who want to get involved. Build this. They will come. Work with your "Friends of the Library" group (if you have one, and if you don't, FORM ONE NOW) to drive initiatives like this.

Don't ask your community's government for the resources to handle this, ask your fellow citizens directly. There are plenty of us who stand ready to help our libraries, because we recognize them for what they are - not dusty rooms full of books, not free-use computers, not distributors of free access to museums and local places of interest, not arts and crafts centers, not meeting spaces, not community builders, but all of these things, and so very much more.

Plutarch once said, “the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” Go light a few fires today.

Re:Yes

[CastrTroy]

They've been headed this way for the last 15 years anyway. My local library in a small town had internet 15 years ago. My local library now in the big city has free wifi. There's no reason why you couldn't use it as a web cafe.

Re:Yes

[PopeRatzo]

Libraries do not have enough legal expenses already, and have ample over-budget to support this initiative.

You think efforts like the ones by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and others to put all the publicly held commons into the hands of the corporate donors is going to stop at public libraries?

Junior, there's not going to be public anything when these Vandals are done.

Re:Yes

[khallow]

It is never about what society can afford, as elements within society will deem that society can afford nothing but to service them and damn everyone else (narcissists and sociopaths). It is about what society values and requires that it members contribute too, in order to remain a part of that society.

If only. You already know what the narcissists and sociopaths value, and they're part of society too.

Whilst the opportunity no longer exists to exile the narcissists and sociopaths to the barbaric regions of the planet away from civilised people that share and care, we must still remember the lessons from the past and learn to isolate them from positions of control, governance and influence.

If only. History shows a different lesson. That the narcissists and sociopaths end up in the positions of control, governance, and influence in the civilized world. I'd go as far as to say civilization cultivates and encourages them. Sure, barbarians might be narcissists and sociopaths, but that tends to be a potentially fatal handicap rather than an asset in low tech regions.

Re:Yes

[BigDogCH]

Asking about the whooshing noise. Classic.

Re:Yes

[awshidahak]

In Ohio our libraries can't even afford to be open 5 days a week and two of those four days are half-days. Not only that, but in our county several libraries have had to be shut down.

Re:Yes

[moortak]

Oddly enough my local library does host a hack space a few times a month in their public rooms. They simply require a waiver of responsibility and a contract from the group for damages.

Re:Yes

[PopeRatzo]

See! I can play the same game too!

It's only a game for you.

Democrats and Republicans both do this.

The tens of thousands of schoolteachers, police and firefighters, emergency medical technicians and state troopers, prison guards and janitors, and their families, and their supporters, who are descending upon Madison, Wisconsin would beg to differ.

Re:Yes

[PopeRatzo]

In Ohio our libraries can't even afford to be open 5 days a week and two of those four days are half-days.

They can't "afford" to be open because all their funding is being funneled to provide tax giveaways to the corporate welfare queens.

I'm really sorry for what's happening to Ohio. It's a shame to see this great state, and others, in a race to become Mississippi.

Re:Yes

[spun]

I believe the only solution is to give in to them completely, then let evolution work it's magic. In a hundred thousand years or so, these parasites will have devolved to the point where they are all some sort of leach-like creatures that attach themselves to their human hosts and suck. Then we just pull them all off and stomp on them, simple really.

Re:Yes

[rtb61]

Obviously, who else would have lead wars of conquest, killing thousands to inflate their own ego and, there are thousands of years of history to demonstrate what happens when narcissists and sociopaths are in control.

Obviously in this day and age we can no longer afford to have them, starting wars, polluting the planet beyond all reason, exploiting everything and everyone to extinction.

Now we have the technology and expertise to detect their genetic cerebral defect and effectively isolate them so that they can not cause harm upon a massive scale.

We're all in it together

[slim]

Public libraries — the availability of free education for all — represent the collective commitment of a community to their future. They symbolize what is most important, a commitment to educating the next generation.

Try telling that to the British government.

Re:We're all in it together

[kenh]

I thought our public schools "represent the collective commitment of a community to their future," not our libraries. (Though I suspect that too many districts reflect our "collective commitment" in an accurate, yet unflattering way.)

Re:We're all in it together

[Anonymous Coward]

> I thought our public schools "represent the collective commitment of a
> community to their future,"

No - I do not have children, will not have children and avoid having anything to do with schools, other than arranging parking tickets for selfish parents who park on the pavement outside the local school.

Libraries, though, are a resource for all and I actively support my local branch, even though the selection of books is abysmal.

Re:We're all in it together

[kenh]

Any chance you pay taxes that support the local schools you "avoid having anything to do with"? Wouldn't that qualify as a "collective commitment" (or lack therof?)

Re:We're all in it together

[Sarten-X]

...because by the age of 25, you've done all the inventing and creation you're going to, and all educational efforts should be spent on just the children.

Re:We're all in it together

[slim]

I thought our public schools "represent the collective commitment of a community to their future," not our libraries.

Isn't it possible for them both to serve (part of) that purpose? As well as our universities, our museums, etc.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

No, public schools represent our collective committment to indoctrinating the children into the worldview of those who control the schools (primarily the teachers' union). If public schools were committed to education, they would more readily remove those children who refuse to learn and do their best to interfere with the learning of others. In the U.S. (and quite likely many other countries), the public schools were created to train children to become ideal citizens. As a society, we no longer have a concensus as to what children need to learn in order to become ideal citizens.
I had not thought about it before but public libraries function in socially useful ways that schools cannot. First, people have to seek out the library. This means that most of those there are there because they want to be. This means that the threat of being banned from the library has real teeth. Second, it means that most of those there wish to learn.

Re:We're all in it together

[Duradin]

First, "those who control the schools (primarily the teachers' union)". Your tinfoil hat may be on too tight.

Then, "If public schools were committed to education, they would more readily remove those children who refuse to learn and do their best to interfere with the learning of others." Talk to teachers. They want to punt the little bastards out but the GOVERNMENT (not the teachers' union) won't let them. NCLB (and OBE before that, etc etc) and all that. Blame the DNA donors of those crotchfruit for refusing to believe their precious little snowflake isn't perfect and just to make sure they are perfect they will legally mandate that the are treated as if perfect.

Re:We're all in it together

[Damek]

Yeah. And tell it to any community effort that's actually tried to embody such values, and been regulated or budgeted out of existence, or shut down by police for not fitting into the state's recognized slots for organizations. I'm thinking of most community groups, activist groups, radical bookstores, public gardens, squatter communities, etc.

Our state values are not our true values. Or vice versa...

(Speaking as a New Yorker and an American)

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

There is a significant difference between what teachers want and what the teachers' union wants. The teachers' unions are no more representative of what teachers want than the AARP is representative of what retired persons want.

Re:We're all in it together

[tnk1]

Having had to deal with the troublemakers that you refer to in such an appealing manner, I understand the desire to remove them from the classroom. On the other hand, the DNA donors of those children also pay taxes to help maintain the school. Presumably that is because their children will be allowed to go to school as well.

On one hand, its not fair to leave those kids in a classroom, but on the other hand, their parents often pay substantial taxes to send their children there. Kicking those children out means not only do the parents not get their money's worth, they also have that much less money to send the child to a school with the resources/expertise to actually work with them.

In this case, the government is facing up to the fact that even bad parents who could care less about education get to vote, although I suppose it is only fair in this case, since it involves their tax money.

I think that it is a good thing that we expect all of our children to be educated. However, there are some serious disadvantages to the way that we have arranged it.

Re:We're all in it together

[stewbacca]

Since the US has compulsory education, I'm not sure "removing those children who refuse to learn" would have any legal merit. Grouping "those who refuse to learn" in a different curriculum that addresses the reasons behind their unwillingness to learn that removes them from distracting the general student body already exists. It's called special education. I think it should be carried to the next level where special education candidates should be grouped and put into entire schools. This goes for advanced students as well (also part of special education that most people aren't aware, as they are too busy bashing those special education kids who are "unwilling to learn"). If we did it like Germany, gifted kids with real interest in academia would be grouped with other gifted kids. Mediocre kids would get the type of vocational training they need to succeed in society. Difficult kids would get the sort of curriculum that addresses the particular causes of their difficultness and perhaps allow them to improve their social statuses.

And yes, we do have concensus (sic) to what children need to learn. It's called standards-based curriculum. Certainly whack-job religious zealots like we have here in Texas make it look like there isn't consensus, there are curriculum professionals like myself who try our best to eliminate those sort of outliers.

Just because most people are unaware that most states have openly available standards, doesn't mean we have no consensus as what our children need to learn. Look at your local school district standards and if you don't think what's in there is valid, take it up with local government.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

I am aware of the fact that most states have openly available curriculum standards and I am aware that most people are unaware that those standards contain elements that they would find offensive. Concensus means that the overwhelming majority agree with the standard. If the voters of Texas regularly elect officials that disagree with the curriculum standard, that indicates that a concensus does not exist among the people of Texas, or that the concensus among the people of Texas is at odds with what people like you are trying to get taught (take your pick).

Re:We're all in it together

[stewbacca]

The consensus should be amongst curriculum experts, not parents, and definitely NOT politicians (albeit school administration is a form of politician).

If random Joe is offended by a curriculum item that curriculum experts deem to be important, they have a couple choices (and they'll probably choose home/private schooling). It's not the curriculum expert's job to appease the mass-mentality and popular opinion--it is our job to create standards and objectives that best help kids succeed. We are also loosely bound by the gray area referred to as "community standards", which are easy in some homogeneous areas, but difficult in urban/diverse areas such as Austin, TX. Community standards change drastically in any 15 mile direction outside of Austin City Limits.

The people of Texas, for the most part, have no clue of what makes for good curriculum development, thus their opinions don't really matter. Imagine if you left oil changing procedures up to the 200 residents on Street X, and none of them were mechanics...same thing.

Re:We're all in it together

[kenh]

True, but many (not ALL, but many) teachers are forced to pay into their unions, AARP is purely optional - you don't have to pay in to AARP if you don't want to, teachers are a bit more coerced into "contributing" to their union.

Also, Teacher's Unions ostensibly have votes on major issues, so in theory the union does represent the will of the teachers it counts as members, at least the majority of them. AARP didn't ask it's members to vote on HCR to determine AARP's position on it, instead AARP took alook at it's medi-gap insurance program and the mney it generates and decided it could make more money after HCR passed. I don't think the majority of seniors, not even those that belong to AARP wanted the Gov't to cut $500BN in provider compensation for medicare/medicaid, that will impacts their ability to find a doctor that accepts medicare...

Sorry, got a bit long-winded, but while I agree with you on the surface, you needn't scrath too deep before you realize that the Teacher's Union, has a responsibility to represent teachers in a much more profound way than AARP...

Re:We're all in it together

[kenh]

No, because we spend $10-25K/student per year on public school education (K-12). If Kids are our future, and collectively we all contribute (all property owners at least), then I stand by my statement. Thirteen years of $15K education is a significant investment, round about $200K per kiddie.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

The concensus must be among the American people or public education doesn't work. If the American people do not have a concensus as to what makes a good citizen, it is not possible to educate children in a way that most people will agree to.
Your first sentence is exactly why public education in America is failing. What children are taught in public schools should most certainly consist of a concensus among the parents of those children. Who are you to decie what someone else's children should be taught? Why should I believe that you are more likely to have their best interests at heart than their parents? Your attitude towards parents is entirely too common among educators. If the parents have not bought into what the schools are teaching, the children will in most cases fail to learn.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, it does have such a responsibility, but I would say that for the most part it fails to do so. The fact that the union dues are mandatory means that the teachers' unions have even less incentive to worry about what teachers actually want. The problem with the way things are setup is that if a teacher decides to campaign against the positions championed by union leaders they are subject to significant negative consequences. If there are few voices out there telling teachers that the leadership position is wrong, which way do you think the majority is going to vote in union elections?

Re:We're all in it together

[IrquiM]

Like it's the current governments fault that the last one was living on credit cards? I like the direction where my current taxes are heading, and I'm not even allowed to vote!

Re:We're all in it together

[stewbacca]

It's "consensus". Perhaps you are making my case for me.

Who am I to decide???? Are you freakin' serious? IT'S MY JOB TO DECIDE AND I HAVE BEEN DELEGATED THAT AUTHORITY THROUGH MY QUALIFICATIONS. I'm an expert in curriculum design. Joe Public isn't. That means I went to six years of college to learn about psychology, education, public policy, administration, et. al. Not to mention I also spent six months writing research. Joe Public just wants to keep Christ in Christmas and likes to bitch when the soda machines are removed from the cafeterias and doesn't know the first damn thing about writing objectives and standards and using measurement devices to ensure they are met. They don't have the slightest damn clue what is in their children's best educational interest, because that gets in the way of football practice.

Parents are the usually the problem so why should I bend to their backassward views? They can instill whatever values they want in their children at home, but as a curriculum professional, it is MY job to apply community standards and district standards to the curriculum that I am writing. It is a great responsibility that I take very seriously--more seriously than most parents.

With that, not all parents are shit bags and of course parents should have input to their community standards and school curriculum. It's just the out-of-touch outliers who demand their precious snowflakes be fed extra special fish sticks and get to be on the varsity football team don't have the right priorities for the general population, and if we bow to everyone's demands, then there is no core curriculum.

If you think that a consensus can be reached amongst the American Public on ANYTHING, then you are vastly more optimistic than I am. Do you watch the news? Do you follow politics?

And now I notice your sig and it all makes sense...

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

If you think that a consensus can be reached amongst the American Public on ANYTHING, then you are vastly more optimistic than I am. Do you watch the news? Do you follow politics?

And this is what is wrong with public education. Unless there is a consensus among the general American Public, public education will continue to fail. Public education cannot succeed unless the general public agrees as to what purpose it is intended to serve.

it is MY job to apply community standards

Where do "community standards" come from if you reject the idea of listening to what the general public (the community) has to say on the issue. You are an elitist pig, who thinks he knows enough to tell other people how they should live their lives.
If you are such an expert in curriculum design, how come education in the U.S. has gotten worse as your discipline has gotten more advanced?

Re:We're all in it together

[stewbacca]

And this is what is wrong with public education. Unless there is a consensus among the general American Public, public education will continue to fail. Public education cannot succeed unless the general public agrees as to what purpose it is intended to serve.

Thank you for making my point. The American public is the problem, not education.

it is MY job to apply community standards

Where do "community standards" come from if you reject the idea of listening to what the general public (the community) has to say on the issue. You are an elitist pig, who thinks he knows enough to tell other people how they should live their lives.

No, I'm an expert in curriculum design who is qualified to tell people who aren't qualified in curriculum design what makes good curriculum. Is the kid who changes the oil in my car elitist because he's the one who knows how to change the oil? Who am I, unskilled at oil changing, to tell the guy how he should change oil.

If you are such an expert in curriculum design, how come education in the U.S. has gotten worse as your discipline has gotten more advanced?

First of all, you can't provide data that show education has gotten worse in the U.S. Even if it is, there are a million social and economic reasons to it that are out of my domain. Schools aren't getting worse because of declining curriculum developers' skills...if anything they are getting worse (if they even are getting worse) because of the meddling of Joe Public who knows nothing about education.

Community standards come from the community (duh), but is only ONE PART of curriculum development. What you are advocating is that community standards drive 100% of the curriculum, which would be a mistake, because most people don't know the first thing about instructional design or curriculum development. That doesn't make me an elitist. If anything, it shows I'm a pragmatic and it makes me one of very few people who is skilled in developing curriculum.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

Schools are getting worse because too many people are trying to use schools to inculcate values that are at odds with those of the parents. You know, American education was very good before there existed any such thing as education majors, let alone "experts in curriculum design". My personal opinion is that your specialty is a symptom of what is wrong with the American education system today.
The best way to teach children is to have it done by people who decide how to teach children based on the personality and gifts of each specific child. A curriculum expert is someone who tries to design a curriculum for schools that work like a factory. I consider the entire academic discipline of education to be a complete waste of resources.

Re:We're all in it together

[stewbacca]

So if you don't think there's a mechanism in place to "teach children based on the personality and gifts of each specific child", that tells me you don't know the first thing about curriculum design. This explains your distorted view of reality and your misplaced distrust. You just want to lash out at that which you don't understand, which, like I've been saying, is the problem with education. Dolts like yourself who THINK they know better, but when confronted with science and evidence, you go all 1890s schoolhouse on us.

What do you propose...a bunch of adults just sitting around and teaching "stuff" to students without any credentials or interest in learning the best teaching methodologies, or learning about early childhood development or cognitive processes? Yeah, you are right. Education as a discipline is a total farce.

Re:We're all in it together

[Attila Dimedici]

I have read your arguments and seen you repeatedly express contempt for the general public. This confirms my distrust of the education establishment. I do understand the concepts of modern education. Your comment about going "all 1890s schoolhouse" sums up a large part of the problem. Please provide some evidence that the 1890s schoolhouse was inferior to the current one.

Re:We're all in it together

[AmiMoJo]

Ok, first let's get on the same page here. In the UK:

Public School - privately run school that you have to pay to attend
State School - publicly run school that is free to attend

State schools are supposed to provide universal high quality education, but of course not all of them are equal. Everyone wants to go to the best schools so property prices around them are inflated and parents will do all sorts of things to improve their chances of getting a child in. In the end having money is the main factor, as much as the last government tried to make the system fairer.

The current lot have found a way to let middle class parents have more control over schools with it's "Big Society" idea. The theory is that government saves money by allowing parents to help run schools, but of course what it really means is that people who can invest significant time into the running of a school can control it and make decisions that benefit themselves. In other words parents who are well off enough for one parent to either not work or only work part time and thus have more free time get their own semi-public school.

Dying out...

[Haedrian]

I don't think Libraries will survive for much longer. If you want a book now you can get it in a digital version, and the publishers are rather adamant about allowing their ebooks to be borrowed from the library, and pretty much anything else can be digitised and accessed online.

So while its a nice idea to convert libraries to this sort of thing, they're not going to survive much longer in my opinion.

Re:Dying out...

[TheCycoONE]

I very much hope your dismal version of the future doesn't happen. Libraries are a last refuse of a saner time when information and art was free for everyone. They are the best, maybe the only, place where you can get a large selection of books, movies, and sometimes games in their full form for free to experience and learn from without breaking the law.

Libraries are almost certainly how the internet should have worked, but it is very far from the reality in an age of ever suffocating copyright laws, publishing companies with more power than artists or consumers, and drm by default.

Re:Dying out...

[maxume]

Corporate media only controls corporate media projects. Something like Wikipedia has its share of problems, but it also has a great deal of decent information, and it isn't terribly likely that the free encyclopedia idea has seen its best days (Wikipedia may have...). Creative Commons exists.

And so on. There may well be some chilling effect due to current copyright, but the idea that corporate media has complete control over all media is simply ludicrous, it is obvious that people are (at least mostly) free to share their own creations as they like.

And then there is the part of the discussion where many of the people that complain about copyright think that the majority of corporate media is crap. So who cares if they copyright their turds?

Re:Dying out...

[slim]

British libraries facilitate eBook lending. Now, of course you could argue this could mean physical library buildings will die out, but this is different from saying "I don't think libraries will survive for much longer".

However, there are books that don't work as eBooks. A very easy example is children's books -- the tactile ones, the pop-up books, the ones on dribble-resistant cardboard, and so on. A good children's section in a library provides a very conducive environment for young children to explore books, and develop a love for reading and learning. The weekly library visit becomes a highlight of a child's week; I'd go so far as to say that it's bad parenting not to take a child to the library regularly (even if you have lots of books at home).

And, libraries aren't just book lending facilities. For people living in cramped/busy accommodation, they can be the only place where you can get the peace and quiet to read or study.

Re:Dying out...

[gl4ss]

libraries as collections of books will continue to live on, people who make collections will not just disappear overnight.
there's a bunch of _authors_ and their estates which are going to get hit more and more in the coming years though as their guaranteed yearly sales will drop(it's like a license to print money in any country with a thousand libraries).

and about copyright. they can try to stop you from reading, they can't stop people from reading, not even by registering typewriters and regularly beating people up for illicit books. they can burn the books but they can't burn replicated data. I'll take my .txt collection anytime over my hometown library, legal or not I can preserve them.

"There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
all inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
so I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Breaking the law, breaking the law"

Re:Dying out...

[Rossman]

This would be terrible, if it happened. Once libraries are gone, the only way to get books will be to buy them. The digital versions will be (eventually) perfected with water-tight DRM so we lose one of the fundamental abilities of a book - it's ability to be lent out without restriction.

Re:Dying out...

[slim]

The digital versions will be (eventually) perfected with water-tight DRM so we lose one of the fundamental abilities of a book - it's ability to be lent out without restriction.

Whatever they try, there's always the analogue hole. Plonk a Kindle on a flatbed scanner, with a solenoid pressing the "next" button, and automate a scan/OCR -- and that's the worst possible case.

DRM upsets customers -- which is why Apple dropped it from iTunes purchases -- so I don't expect it to ever get *that* tough.

Re:Dying out...

[Attila Dimedici]

Of course, that digital version can be edited to only say things that are acceptable today. That means that if a politician writes a book and then rises to significant power and some of the things that he/she wrote in that book are now a liability, those things can be made to have never been written. This is just one example of the problem with all information being in digital format. The same thing can be done to historical facts that become inconvenient to those in power.
Even if you somehow maintain a copy of the digital record from before the editing, how do you demonstrate that the official record is the one that got edited? It is much harder to produce a book with the right patina of age than it is to produce a digital record that is dated as being of a particular age.

Re:Dying out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Over 10 years ago, I read an editorial that pointed out that if you want to look at what a "privatized" library system would look like, you have only to look at your local Barnes & Noble store..

For now, they'll let you sit there and read a book from their stacks, and even read your own books that you bring. But, of course, they could change that tomorrow. And, of course, they don't stock obscure and old books. But in our brave new world, why would you want to read those older books anyway. They probably just contain obsolete thoughts and might even be dangerous. Much better to consume what B&N has selected for you.

Now sit back down with your muffin and coffee and read

Re:Dying out...

[mellon]

I think you're missing the point. It is precisely because of this phenomenon that the idea of using libraries as hackerspaces makes sense. We still need the function that the library provides, even if the medium through which that function is delivered has changed. Growing hackerspaces in public libraries is a way to save them.

As for what publishers want, are we (wo)men or are we mice? If what they want is contrary to the public interest, then this is just more nail in the coffin of traditional publishing, which has in fact been dying out faster than libraries, in case you hadn't noticed.

Re:Dying out...

[SirGarlon]

If you want a book now you can get it in a digital version

Two points: First, I can "easily" get it in digital version subject to the publisher's whim, and on the publisher's terms (which are subject to change at any time), and assuming someone bothered to digitize it. That's great, until it's not. Second, *I* can easily get e-books because I can afford a computer and $50 a month for broadband access. However, not everyone is so fortunate. Internet access is expensive to someone who's paid subsistence wages and below. I think the segment of people who can't easily afford such things is larger than you think, based on the number of computer users I see when I walk into my local library.

Re:Dying out...

[gtall]

Yes, and added to that, libraries contain dictionaries with the meanings of words such as "refuse".

Re:Dying out...

[Zeroko]

Actually, that is unfortunately not the worst case. With improvements in object & face recognition technology they could additionally require that a human be viewing the device & no recording device of any sort be within view or refuse to display anything (except "DIE EVIL PIRATE!" of course).

Re:Dying out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh yes, the notion that the only reason people read the Twilight series is because "that's all" that Barnes & Noble carries.

1) If you actually go into a typical B&N, or Borders, at least in the Northeast, you'll find it surprisingly well stocked with lots of stuff that probably wouldn't appeal to "mass market" readers - poetry, philosophy, a whole section on computers & programming, art, photography, music, movies (books about, and the actual CDs / DVDs), biography, history. There's a wide range, if you actually go in past the first two or three shelves you see when you walk in the door.

2) If it's obscure, but still in print, they'll be happy to order the book for you. I've done this on numerous occasions from my local B&N. Many of the staff have been obscenely cheerful in rendering assistance - in my experience, many of their employees actually love reading, and are happy to spend a few minutes helping you track down a book, or offering some suggestions.

3) The reason they have a few shelf units stocked with copies of Twilight and Harry Potter books is because those are the things that lots of people come in looking to buy, and where they generate the profits that allow them to have shelves upon shelves with 1-3 copies of those uncommonly-asked-for books that you imply they don't carry, and won't help people find.

As a "privatized" library, you could do a hell of a lot worse than emulating the model followed by some of the bigger chains.

Re:Dying out...

[geekoid]

Yes they will. For quite some time. The philosophical reasons for libraries are stronger then the current and temporary eBook hassle.

Re:Dying out...

[stewbacca]

I don't think Libraries will survive for much longer.

With the current climate of slashing funding for anything remotely intellectual set by the newly elected morons in Washington, I'd say libraries are doomed.

Re:Dying out...

[DavidTC]

Do you have an actual thing you're complaining about? Because it sounds like you're complaining about Barnes & Noble, except not what they actually do, what they might in some hypothetical future might do.

That's the reason I don't like sushi restaurant down the street. At some point in the future they might start making people take off their clothes and masturbate to come inside, and, let me tell you, such hypothetical behavior is outrageous!

What you are actually opposed to is private libraries, so maybe you should direct your anger at people promoting those, and not a completely innocent bookstore that currently has, as you pointed out, fairly lax policies, and has nothing to do with privatizing libraries at all?

And, BTW, Barnes and Nobles sells pretty much every book that's in print. They obviously can't fit all those in a single store, so most of it's online, or you can order at the store and have it sent there and pick it up later. The online store even lets you find used copies of books not in print.

I'm sure it's some great sin for a store to fill their shelves with the stuff that people actually buy, though, which is how Barnes and Nobles, just like every store that exists, determines their shelf usage. And not some wacked out conspiracy is an attempt to deny you access to books.

Seriously, I'm as anti-corporate as they come, but what the fuck has Barnes and Noble ever done to anyone?

I'm sure someone is about to claim that they 'drive independent bookstores out of existence', at which point I will preemptively respond: Bullshit. 90% of this country does not have these independent new bookstores people claim exist. 90% of the county never had any bookstore until the chains showed up, except a used bookstore that maybe got 20 new books a month.

Re:Dying out...

[DavidTC]

Not only will they order basically any book in print for you, the website will let you track down books not in print and order them used from someone.

Because, you see, they have a secret plan to make money, which is, they buy books using a special deal with bookmakers to buy them cheap, and then they sell them for more money. So they make money on all their book sales.

And, when they promote one book over another, it's not because it fits some ideological bias of theirs, it's because it's either going to make them more money on each copy sold, or they think they can lure you in with it and buy other books and stuff. Hence Twilight release parties. Sneaky, I know.

Which is also why they let you read for free, because being nice to customers means they have customers, and customers buy things. It's why they help you purchase out-of-print books they don't carry, from other places. They're hoping you'll also buy something from them, those selfish bastards.

It's a giant conspiracy, I tell you! Someone should write an expose about it. But I bet B&N wouldn't sell it. Well, they'd sell it, but no one would fucking buy it, because everyone already knows how companies operate, except apparently crazy conspiracy theorists, who've decided that B&N are on some ideological mission and not the standard 'making money by selling things to customers that customers want to buy' mission they are actually on.

Re:Dying out...

[catmistake]

Contrary to your limited viewpoint, a public library isn't just a place to lend dusty old books. There are uncountable resources in your public library you will never find online. Beyond literature, reference and information, a library is a public service to the community and an undeniable symbol of civilization. It is a social entity of the likes that Facebook (and social web garbage) and idealized digital libraries could never compete with nor replace. A public library is community and serves specifically the community within which it exists. You're not going to find anything online but shallow marketing concerning your local community, yet at your local library you will find people that are dedicated to serving your local reference, informational and literary needs. No computer can replace them. Libraries will evolve to encompass the Internet, but the Internet can never evolve to replace your local public library. A person is far more valuable than a website. If it helps you to understand, you should consider your local library to be identifiable with your local community. You could no more replace your public library with applied computerized data than you could replace yourself, or your occupation, or your government, or your family with the same.

Re:Dying out...

[evansvillelinux]

I don't think Libraries will survive for much longer. If you want a book now you can get it in a digital version, and the publishers are rather adamant about allowing their ebooks to be borrowed from the library, and pretty much anything else can be digitised and accessed online. So while its a nice idea to convert libraries to this sort of thing, they're not going to survive much longer in my opinion.

You obviously don't go to the library very often, do you? (I'm not trying to be a smart ass so please don't take this comment as such.) I work for a public library system that has consistent circulation of print and non-print materials. Besides checking out books, we offer reference services, free internet access and (thanks to Uncle Sam) you can come get your tax forms at the library. We do more than just "check out books" and we're gonna be here for a long time. :-)

Depends.

[Tei]

What type of country you want? do you want a country of consumers, or a country of producers?
Do you have a big population that you want to be producers?, If you have choose a country of consumers, but you don't have a solution to give everyone jobs, you have choose unemployment and discontent.

Re:Depends.

[SuricouRaven]

And you can't have producers without consumers to justify their production.

Re:Depends.

[slim]

If we can bring our kids up as bold innovators again

Well, that's one kind of production. The other kind is to toil at a production line all day, getting a wage while making someone else rich. Not everyone can be the innovator.

It seems a bit churlish to deny the muscle of the production line a little fun, spending the money they earn on consuming.

Re:Depends.

[lwsimon]

Sure you can - you'd just be a net exporter.

How many factory workers in the Foxconn factories in China can afford the iPad 2 that they make every day?

Re:Depends.

[mellon]

Um, traditionally we consume *and* produce. That's how economies work. The tragedy of recent times is that a lot of what's produced is garbage whose only purpose is to justify a salary for a consumer, often while creating a burden on society that is much greater than the salary being paid. But we can't put people on the dole--oh no, that would make them lazy.

Re:Depends.

[SuricouRaven]

My point was that it has to be balanced. One person today can be more productive than ever before, thanks to modern industrial technology, automation and communications - and if one person can do more, it means less are needed to do the same amount, which means severe unemployment. The only way that has been avoided so far is to hugely increase consumption to match: People today, espicially in western countries, live a lifestyle of waste that would make their ancestors ashamed. We throw away clothes with a small tear rather than sew them up, we toss much of the food we buy in the bin. There is a whole industry, marketing, dedicated to making people buy things they don't really want or want things they don't really need.

You can run an economy unbalanced - producing more than is consumed, or vice veras - using international trade, but it creates long-term problems both politically and economically.

I do wonder if there is a limit to consumption - a point at which most people will simply decide that no, they don't need to spend any more money to be happy, no matter how much the marketing companies try to convince them.

Re:Depends.

[geekoid]

Producers, by there nature, ARE consumer; where as consumers don't need to be producers

*Whooosh*

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the sound the flying metal shards make as they penetrate a child's skin at your remodeled, "tech shop" local library hackerspace. Fortunately, this fits in well with the current purview of libraries, and they will welcome these (and other) additional liabilities with open arms!

Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

And that sort of environment is not conducive to creating things. While I think Make magazine has a point, I prefer that maker spaces stay semi-private so this does not happen to them. I also want to make sure that other government agencies don't feel that it's their right to start sending the overflow of what they have to deal with to the maker spaces I enjoy.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[maxume]

Avoid the symptoms, ignore the disease?

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[dkleinsc]

That phenomenon is hardly the fault of either homeless or public libraries.

Yes, homeless hang around libraries. It's a comfortable temperature, there's things to do other than beg for food, there are bathrooms available, and as a member of the public they have every right to be there. And they might well be taking the time to study some new job skills and the like in order to break out of the poverty they're in.

And from the public library's standpoint, their job is to serve whatever members of the public walk in the front door, whoever they are (provided that they aren't trying to do anything illegal). Those same folks that you'd love to avoid are patrons of the library just like you.

I also want to make sure that other government agencies don't feel that it's their right to start sending the overflow of what they have to deal with to the maker spaces I enjoy.

It's public. That means that just because you enjoy those places doesn't mean you have any more right to be there than anyone else.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

That phenomenon is hardly the fault of either homeless or public libraries.

Indeed it is not. And that makes libraries an environment that is neither conducive to studying or to making things. Therefor I wish maker spaces to remain semi-private. I don't want to turn them into public resources like libraries are.

I agree completely with all the points you make. My point is this makes it so libraries cannot effectively serve the mission of educating people or providing a collaborative space for people to make stuff.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

Avoid the symptoms, ignore the disease?

And how is forcing myself to be around a bunch of people who are mostly mentally ill really helping anybody at all?

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[sgtrock]

Where do you live that this is such a problem? I've never seen that kind of issue in any library in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul for those outside the U.S.) area. And we certainly have our share of homeless here, even with winters that can sometimes be brutal.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[maxume]

I'm not suggesting that it would.

I just find it strange that you would interject in such a way. Public maker spaces aren't terribly likely to drive private ones out of business due to tool scheduling (especially the private ones that are currently profitable), so to cry foul when someone proposes expanding the function of a system you already claim to avoid doesn't make any sense to me.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

Well, I have not read the article, which is actually somewhat unusual for me. I was worried that the proposal was to turn maker spaces into public resources rather than leaving them as semi-private. In other words, I was worried that the idea was to do away with private ones, or make them into public ones.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

The Twin Cities is very non-conducive to homelessness. The bitter winters set it up so that if you're homeless in Minneapolis you have to at least be able to follow the rules of living in a shelter or you die. I know. I've lived there. It is a very minor problem in Minneapolis' public libraries, but it is not that bad.

I live in Seattle now, and it's a much worse problem here, though it's still reasonable to go into a library if you adopt a certain set of behavioral strategies designed to deal with it. I haven't been into a library in San Francisco, but I bet I would not want to be in one no matter what behavioral strategies I adopted.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Hatta]

The proper solution to homeless people hanging around libraries is to provide better services specifically to the homeless. There should be shelters and mental health clinics available. But I guess we'd rather give tax breaks to the rich.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[geekoid]

What do you base that on?

I have never seen a homeless person in a library, and we go fairly regularly.

Game stop, OTOH, always has some homeless person playing a demo.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Omnifarious]

I am not convinced that there is any amount of money that would solve the problem. And whether or not some solution exists is completely orthogonal to the question of whether or not libraries make good maker spaces anyway. The fact is, currently, libraries make a very poor place for learning.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[geekoid]

Mostly like they are mentally ill, or an addict. Yes, there are exceptions but they are in the minority.

Reagan killed all the help for mentally ill people.
Reagan's dramatic increase* in the "war on Drugs" has made it impossible for people addicted to drugs to reasonably get help.

What we have no is one of the only really things that trickled doesn't from his presidency.

IN my experience with the homeless, the ones that aren't mentally ill or an addict are the ones that make an effort to not smell Those homeless don't really matter in this conversation because they aren't going to bother people.

It's is abundantly clear that the Tea Bagger and neo-con extremist have no desire to help the homeless. They seemed to be trapped in a fiction 1950s view of the world where people are homeless only because they are lazy.

*Nixon started it.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[Americano]

And they might well be taking the time to study some new job skills and the like in order to break out of the poverty they're in.

In fact, less than 5% of the general population suffers from mental illness; estimates suggest that 20-40% of the homeless population suffers from some form of mental illness. Libraries are not mental health clinics. Librarians are not trained & certified psychologists and psychiatrists. And finally, many of the homeless people suffering from mental illness are not just "dealing with a mild depression" - we're talking schizophrenia, paranoia, psychosis - profound mental illness.

I'm all for keeping libraries open to the public. I'm also all for getting mentally ill people the treatment they need, rather than turning other public spaces into cattle pens because we'd much rather let the mentally ill languish, untreated, mostly out of sight, until their presence becomes an inconvenience for us.

Suggesting that "letting the homeless people stay at the library" as some sort of residential center is as callous and inhumane as suggesting that turning them back out onto the streets would be the better solution.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[sfkaplan]

Wow, what a horrible generalization based on nothing. In spite of the wonderful spaces that libraries provide -- not only the raw tools for being engrossed in reading, writing, and thinking, but also the inspiring environment of being surrounded by other people doing those exact things -- you're willing to broadly diminish the role of libraries because some locations provide insufficient support for the homeless.

Methinks you need to allow a little more complexity in your evaluations. Libraries are such wonderful places for the curious and creative. To claim that you want your "maker spaces" (what a horrid choice of words) to be kept semi-private so that you don't need to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced is selfish. Solve the problem properly: Look for ways to support the homeless in your community (public or private, whichever you think best for the purpose); then leave the libraries public so that anyone who is creative or inquisitive has a good place to visit.

Re:Libraries have become daytime homeless shelters

[dkleinsc]

By all means, get the homeless the help they need, mental illness treatment or otherwise. And I'm somebody who fairly regularly volunteers my time and money to help do just that. Also important on that front is better VA funding, since far too many of the folks on the streets are veterans who were denied proper treatment.

I'm just saying that you can't legitimately turn them away at other public spaces just because they're using stuff that you want to use too, and that as far as places to be for the other 60-80% who are not mentally ill the library is probably a better choice than many.

As a librarian..

[Anonymous Coward]

..this is all very hollow talk which sounds like it's coming from keen people with big ideas who want to waltz in get what they want.

Apparently they also have no idea of how difficult it is to run a library or how tight our budgets are. Hackerspaces and fablabs in a library? Where in the seven hells do you want us to put one of those, let alone pay for it? I'm not sure how things are in America but here (Under Down) we have no spare room and absolutely no budget to throw around, we get more cuts than anything else.

Don't get me wrong I love working in a modern library with an equal focus on electronics and traditional media but this - this is just empty grandiose talk from people who don't have to get their hands dirty.

Anyway, I don't want to be a downer but apparently this guy lives in a magical land where everybody shits money and cooperates and I don't.

Re:As a librarian..

[natehoy]

I don't know how things work in Oz, but a lot of libraries in the US have formed "Friends of the Library" groups that manage and help fund things like this (or anything the local government is unwilling or unable to fund). Our local library has one, and it offers things like free passes to local museums and places of interest, kids' art programs, juried art and photography exhibits, teen programs, reading and story times, etc. All run and managed by volunteers, all supported by voluntary membership fees and donations and proceeds from things like sales of community-donated used books and modest entry fees into the art/photography shows.

The "Friends" are partners with the library, and do the sorts of things that the library lacks a budget and personnel to handle. Everything is paid for by the members of the community who wish to participate, and everything can be enjoyed by everyone whether they pay in or not. Enough people cough up $20 (or in a lot of cases a LOT more) a year that the Friends group in our community is doing quite well, and has programs going on constantly.

Re:As a librarian..

[TaoPhoenix]

Actually, what if we separated the two? I'll go on a limb and say it's not all that impossible to run a library *if* the budget was sensible.

I'd peg this as an oblique kind of poke at how a famous few types of sacrificial lamb depts are always paraded as "times are tough" in the same paragraph that we need to get a license to live.

I'd love to see a library with untouchable private backing that the Gov can't mess with, and then it really would be a freedom center.

Moron Politician: "We need a new stealth plane. Times are tough. Let's cut the libraries."
BlackOp Library: "We need cash flow. I think I'll call the US Treasury and call in a 1$billion in illegally defaulted bonds that you didn't tell the public about."

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[Monchanger]

Yeah, we saw your stupid opinion on libraries last time. It was as worthless as this one where you agreed with a sarcastic comment. Way to go, dumbass.

Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[oneiros27]

Just because you haven't been in a library in years doesn't mean they're dying out. With the recession, I'd say my local library is busier than ever.

• Want to watch a movie tonight for free?
• Need a computer to search for a job or fill out a job application?
• Need a book for resume advice?
• Want to try out a cookbook before you buy it as you're doing more cooking at home and need some more variety?
• Kids need a place while their parents are working a second job? (okay, this one's a bit of a problem; not all kids are well behaved)

All are available at your library. Some even loan out video games. (ours doesn't, but we organize video game nights for the kids; I'm working on organizing a 'video game swap' at the next one so people can trade the games they're not playing with other people)

And those are just the reasons for the busier times; I see the same parents picking up an armload a week for their kids to read. When the kid's going through a book a night, it adds up, even at $0.99 ebooks. And this way, you don't have to worry about the kid breaking a $100+ ebook reader, or get one for each kid.

If anything, the reason they're not going to survive is because of budget cuts due to loss of tax revenue. There's been a concerted push to get politicians to back up when they say 'We support education' to fund the libraries, or explain what they really mean is 'We support schools', even when most of their time is wasted teaching to standardized tests.

Free pron for homeless

[gatzke]

I made the mistake of taking my kids to the local public library right when it opened one morning. The local shelter is across the street, so all the homeless head over the the library for Heat/AC and internets.

I would say unfettered free internet access for homeless seems to be the new library mission.

But I really don't have a problem with that. It keeps them off the street, it keeps them away from local businesses, it keeps them away from substance abuse a bit.

Personally, I would make internet access in the main hall stand up only and put in a remote "internet access room" with comfy chairs, free coffee, and separate restrooms.

I did learn to show up 15 minutes after they open to avoid the smell and stares...

Re:Free pron for homeless

[IrquiM]

While other countries tries to solve the problems for the homeless by giving them a place to live etc, the US obviously focuses directly on education!

Re:Free pron for homeless

[gatzke]

I am not sure if you are trying to be humorous in your post.

The US generally has housing for low-income folks. But some people don't take advantage of it for one reason or another.

I have heard people say that most of the homeless in the US have mental health issues. For years, they would have been involuntarily committed, but court cases in the 70s set them free.

Having them hang out in the library is not such a terrible thing for them or the community in general. Although, I doubt they are getting much education.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[Haedrian]

My local library is composed of a number of ancient books held together by cellotape, the only computer is used to search for books, and you can't find anything in there which isn't a book.

So yeah I guess your mileage may vary, but except for the University Library (which works rather differently), all the libraries over here are like that. Used to love going when I was younger and there was no internet.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

More of this.

[metrometro]

Libraries are pre-positioned all over our cities, and pretty soon they're not going to be full of bookshelves. Costs will go way down (think $10 e-readers), assuming the publishing industry doesn't win their fight to create kill switch licenses (see boycottharpercollins.com for details there).

This is a huge opportunity.

This is a chance to reinvent a great public space into a pillar of the new peer to peer economy: hacker space, certainly, but also coworking space, peer education space, a meetup space, a place to celebrate the commons in all its forms. Yes, they are strapped for cash. But meetups are cheap when you've got real estate already. And it's a lot easier to fund something that's full of users. So let's shove those shelves to the back, and start making stuff.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[slim]

This is one of those threads where it's worth people noting what country (or even which state) they're in.

British libraries tend to be fairly adequately stocked. If they don't have a book you're looking for, you can search their catalogue and order it from a different branch within the region. If you want a specific book they don't own, they'll consider buying it.

So, it seems like we're pretty lucky here. However, the current government is doing their best to wreck it all with funding cuts (while claiming all the while that local councils can achieve the same services on less money, simply by waving a magic "efficiency" wand.)

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[Zontar The Mindless]

Your perception of what a library is and does may well be obsolete.

Fortunately, libraries are not constrained by your perceptions.

Uhhh, Wot???

[RobotRunAmok]

My children 10, 10, and 13 spend hours a day, several days a week, in one of our four local libraries. They browse the magazines and encyclopedic references, read the graphic novels and manga that are too expensive to buy, try out books that are "above their level" that their schools don't make readily available, and generally just read the hell out of everything they find. The local libraries are part of an even ginormously larger library system with shared resources searchable and order-able through a really well-designed online database, and I've taught my kids how to use the "recommendations" feature on Amazon and follow through with an order to the library system instead. In short, my kids are probably the most voracious readers in their classes, and I haven't bought a book for them in years, save birthdays, at which time the books become a treasured "You mean this is mine... to keep?!" item.

Weekends at the library are already out-of-control with concerts, crafts instruction, readings, plays, chess leagues, and education programs for every age level.

Fine for now, but what about the "digital future?" I just downloaded my first digital library book last night to my wife's Nook. Yeah, sure, I stripped the DRM from it as soon as I got it, just to see if I could (it's a geek thing...) but in principle I really have no problem with DRM on a library e-book: you wouldn't *own* the paper version, and you'd have to return it or pay a late fee after a time for it. For library loaners, DRM actually makes sense.

Libraries are here for the long term.

Re:Uhhh, Wot???

[Barefoot Monkey]

Fine for now, but what about the "digital future?" I just downloaded my first digital library book last night to my wife's Nook. Yeah, sure, I stripped the DRM from it as soon as I got it, just to see if I could (it's a geek thing...) but in principle I really have no problem with DRM on a library e-book: you wouldn't *own* the paper version, and you'd have to return it or pay a late fee after a time for it. For library loaners, DRM actually makes sense.

I agree - that this is a very appriate use of DRM. The big problem with DRM is that it is usually used to hold onto control of something after selling it to someone else. The customers then have a strong impetus to break the DRM in order to reclaim what they paid for, and those who aren't inclined to do so tend to build up a sense of resentment toward the supplier. This means making effective DRM is difficult and expensive, and also means you alienate your customers. In the case of a library you would ask to borrow an e-book for a couple of weeks and they give you a DRM'd copy of the work (hopefully made from a non-DRM archive so that they don't just vanish one day) which lasts for 2 weeks after which you can ask for another if you so wish. There's no real reason for someone to feel forced to crack this e-book (even if expiry dates are easier to crack than activation server requirement) or to resent the library or the publisher for not giving you something that lasts for as long as you can look after it (since you're just borrowing it anyway, and therefor have no reasonable expectation of being able to keep it).

Re:Uhhh, Wot???

[KermodeBear]

My children 10, 10, and 13 spend hours a day, several days a week, in one of our four local libraries.

Thank you for raising children that appreciate knowledge. Too many parents don't seem to give a crap these days.

I think I'm good..

[phrackwulf]

With things the way they are now. The public library is one of the few outposts of acceptance and quiet for extreme introverts like me and I don't buy the argument that soon they are going to be full of e-readers and everything will be on the web. There is advancement in technology but there will always be applying the best technology for the application. I'm sorry, but I will never take an e-reader to the beach with me. Sand, sun and water don't play well with it. A paperback book is going to persist forever in some form because they are an excellent fit for that application. And I can haul them around with me when I go for a run. So how about you leave the libraries alone? Cranberry flavored beer and no smoking everywhere is just fine. Child safe everything and RFID everywhere also. All I need is a nice library here and there, preferably in walking distance and maybe even a fireplace if that isn't too environmentally horrifying for you. I consider myself a reasonable person.

Activism vs. Passivism

[Damek]

The only reason libraries are tolerated by the state is their abject passivism.

Turn libraries into bastions of activism and they'll be regulated/budget-cut out of existence, just like all other activist spaces that achieve some sort of legitimacy are eventually regulated out of existence or have rents raised beyond reasonable levels.

If our society really held the values that people give lip service to when they talk about libraries, they would already be bastions of activism. Complaints in this very thread about them being "daytime shelters for the homeless" reveal exactly the opposite: what people want is a "free bookstore, but keep those other people out, please." Values of community, shared investment in education and the future and all that jazz, that necessarily implies open to all, including those nasty poor people.

Re:Activism vs. Passivism

[CharlyFoxtrot]

The only reason libraries are tolerated by the state is their abject passivism.

Turn libraries into bastions of activism and they'll be regulated/budget-cut out of existence, just like all other activist spaces that achieve some sort of legitimacy are eventually regulated out of existence or have rents raised beyond reasonable levels.

If our society really held the values that people give lip service to when they talk about libraries, they would already be bastions of activism. Complaints in this very thread about them being "daytime shelters for the homeless" reveal exactly the opposite: what people want is a "free bookstore, but keep those other people out, please." Values of community, shared investment in education and the future and all that jazz, that necessarily implies open to all, including those nasty poor people.

Wasn't always like that. Check out the history of the oldest public library :

"Chetham's Library in Manchester, England is the oldest free public reference library in the United Kingdom.[1] Chetham's Hospital, which contains both the library and Chetham's School of Music, was established in 1653 under the will of Humphrey Chetham (1580–1653), for the education of "the sons of honest, industrious and painful parents",[1] and a library for the use of scholars. The library has been in continuous use since 1653. It operates as an independent charity, open to readers and visitors free of charge.

[...]

Chetham's was the meeting place of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels when Marx visited Manchester. The economics books Marx was reading at the time can be seen on a shelf in the library, as can the window seat where Marx and Engels would meet."

Re:Activism vs. Passivism

[tnk1]

You can hold values as important and still not want to have to spend extended periods of time with homeless people who may have poor hygiene and are quite possibly mentally ill (a major reason many are homeless).

Also, most people hold that libraries have value as providing public education and resources, not activism. If they became "centers of activism", I'd vote to cut them out too. I don't want my taxes paying for someone to be an activist. If I want activism, I'll damn well donate to a political party or grass roots group. Its not that hard to do that.

Taxing me to have an "activism" center just means that whoever can monopolize it gets my money instead of the groups I would spend my money on if I had an actual choice.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[oneiros27]

Our libraries (Prince George's County, Maryland, USA) are like that ... it's actually a county library system, but they can either get books from another branch in the system, or put in an ILL (Inter-Library Loan) request to get it from one of the neighboring counties, some of the public universities, etc. Also, not all of the branches have the same books; They all have the basic stuff (novels, DVDs, kids books), but when it comes time to do serious research, the smaller libraries (like the one I volunteer at), only have books for elementary school; you have to go to a medium-sized library to also have middle school books, and the large-sized libraries have research materials up through high school, so I'll often have to order stuff I'm interested in.

I think the consideration for buying it is in how obscure it is, and the liklihood of someone else wanting it. If it's too strange, they won't do it, but for most stuff, they have no problem. (each branch has funds set aside for these purchases).

Our big round of funding cuts a couple of years ago we went from being on the verge of approval to have late hours one night to being closed two days a week.

As a Friend of the Library ...

[oneiros27]

You have to find people willing to do these things.

I've organized a few video game days (even donated a Wii a few years ago when they were still hard to find), but we couldn't get enough people coming to make it worthwhile; They just had another one on Wednesday (but I had a conflicting meeting), so it's possible we might start back up again.

Most of our volunteers handle things like book repairs, helping with the re-shelving, stuff like that. There's then two of us who deal with processing donations for our book sales (no, we don't want your 30 year old set of encyclopedia that's growing mold ... that's what we call 'mulch').

But our volunteers are aging (note, we have 100+ 'friends' but about 8 who come in regularly to volunteer)... there had been a time when I was the only one under 45. Now, after two families moved away, I think I'm the only one under 60. As we've got two out due to long-term injuries, we're really stretched thin ... and I've heard we've got the most active group in the whole county.

an alternative

[khallow]

There's no reason we couldn't create a specialized non-profit whose purpose is to provide workshop space for DIY. You don't have to repurpose existing public entities who don't have the funding, space, or expertise to implement this plan.

Re:an alternative

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Aren't most hackerspaces already registered as nonprofits? I know the one in Santa Barbara, California is.

Re:an alternative

[Sentrion]

I agree with this. Use public broadcasting as a model. They accept government funding, such as grants, but unlike municipal libraries, they cannot just be sold-off or closed-down for political reasons. Even if government funding were withheld entirely, the prevailing opinion is that there would be enough contributions from NGO's, corporate grants/sponsorships, and private citizens to keep most stations running. Not too mention all of the licensing fees they get from Elmo!

So maybe call it the "International Public Hackspaces Corporation", and come up with some sort of mascot that will appeal to a broad audience - then merchandise! Volunteer effort, public and private grants, fund raising campaigns, and donation of tangible assets could go a long way. Maybe they can even bail out the failing libraries by RENTING unused library space to inject enough cash flow to keep away the downsizing axe from City Hall.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[VGPowerlord]

Our libraries (Prince George's County, Maryland, USA) are like that ... it's actually a county library system, but they can either get books from another branch in the system, or put in an ILL (Inter-Library Loan) request to get it from one of the neighboring counties, some of the public universities, etc. Also, not all of the branches have the same books; They all have the basic stuff (novels, DVDs, kids books), but when it comes time to do serious research, the smaller libraries (like the one I volunteer at), only have books for elementary school; you have to go to a medium-sized library to also have middle school books, and the large-sized libraries have research materials up through high school, so I'll often have to order stuff I'm interested in.

That's basically how it works here in Lansing, Michigan, USA... although our library system is not county-wide, it still has access to ILL requests and can get books from other regions, including at least two universities.

Of course, since Michigan State University is within driving distance, I'd be better off going directly there if I need books for research.

As far as I'm aware, our library system is funded completely through taxes.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[tangelogee]

Charles County, MD, USA is pretty much the same, with the exception that we are in a group with neighboring counties to more easily provide access to more books. It actually used to be nicer, when you could get books from the public library loaned to a High school library. Luckily so far we have not experienced many visible cuts to our libraries.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[Monchanger]

Oh, poor baby. Your opinion was criticized. As were you for blindly agreeing with a sarcastic comment in your need to feel like you're not the only schmuck sharing that opinion. Let's all have a great big cry-fest and apologize for your hurt feelings.

Fact of the matter is your opinion is wrong. Yes you're entitled to state it.
"PC" my ass. I explained how it's wrong several days ago. You didn't care to respond, which you're also entitled to do.
Now you're back here again repeating the "libraries are obsolete" nonsense, despite it being shown to be a useless point of view which you don't bother to actually discuss. That's still legal, but it doesn't make you any less of a nuisance to this community than the common troll.

So yeah, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this but, these posts of yours are useless. You don't have to censor yourself- just say something interesting on the subject for a change.

can they afford the cost?

[peter303]

Most of the towns around me have cut hours severely and even closed branches. This is a cruel irony because many unemployed people have stopped paying for home internet in favor of public internet. Many libraries are funded by property taxes, which havent gone up much lately.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[cheeks5965]

My mother in law is a librarian in a poor neighborhood. She gets a lot of patrons who need internet access, or are borrowing books / other media instead of buying, or kids who need a place to go for the afternoons after school. The parent post is very insightful. sorry I don't have any mod points.

O'Reilly trying to take over libraries?

[Animats]

This is "Make" magazine again, the O'Reilly publishing/convention empire's attempt to 0wn the do-it-yourself movement by turning it into a cult. Looks like they're now targeting libraries.

I have a membership at TechShop, and use it regularly. TechShop is not a "hacker space". It's a machine shop. (Silicon Valley has a "hacker space", called Hacker Dojo. I took a good machine learning class there. Hacker Dojo is a place where people with no office go to work, like Starbucks.) The point of TechShop is that they offer access to large machine tools. Most of those tools are way too heavy duty for a library. TechShops have manual and CNC milling machines, a plasma cutter or water jet cutter, CNC laser cutters, a welding shop, sheet metal machinery, etc. Yesterday, TechShop SF had a crew from the power company digging up the street to put in heavier power lines.

TechShop gives about forty different "Safety and Basic Usage" courses. Each runs one to two hours, and is required before using the relevant machine. That makes the TechShop concept work. Many of them are taught in the evenings by people who use such machines as their day job. The courses cost $50 to $100 each, and the instructors are paid.

This is way beyond the public library level. Those places are tough to run, and they're still debugging the concept. The one in Silicon Valley works because there's enough engineering talent in Silicon Valley to make just about anything. It's not yet clear how San Francisco will work out.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[stewbacca]

Libraries are as obsolete as ballet, opera, fine art, public transportation, public television, and any number of things that MOST people never use. Doesn't mean they should go away, however.

I want to run a tech shop!

[Gnaythan1]

I'd LOVE to run a tech shop, or something very like it North of Seattle. http://lastonk.blogspot.com/2011/02/tech-shop.html Unless someone drops a few bags of money in my lap though... it will be at least five more years before I can afford to open one. In the meantime, I'm learning business management, and reading everything I can on the subject, and pinching pennies preparing for when I can do this.

I know where they are going

[geekoid]

They are going to move to digital media as well has hard media.
You will get a copy sent to your ereader, and in a specific period, it will self return. You will probably have the ability to extend the self return data twice.

It's not really rocket surgery.

All that assume that the republican won't pull funding from libraries.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[thetoadwarrior]

I still enjoy going to the library. If you like physical books then what in the world is wrong with a place where you can borrow them for free? It's also a nice quiet place to relax and concentrate on things

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[stewbacca]

What about "want to read a really good book but don't want to pay anything for it"?

That's what I use the library for. Why buy a book you'll read probably once, when you can just go to the library (mine is actually closer than the closest bookstore) and check it out. Read it. Return it. How hard is that?

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[s73v3r]

Sucky. The local libraries in places where I've lived (Medium town South Dakota and Orange County, CA) have all had computers with internet access (since internet was somewhat popular, around late 90s), and recently have offered free wi-fi.

Excuse me

[rhinokitty]

SHHHHHHH!!!

But there's an easy solution to that one

[sean.peters]

We could, you know, stop giving rich people giant tax breaks and we wouldn't have this deficit problem.

You're right, this game is easy to play!

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[spun]

It is my opinion that you are some sort of puffer fish, most likely a dickless idjit puffer fish named c64_love. I am also of the opinion that black is white, two plus two equals five, and your mamma so fat they just upgraded her from "planetoid" to "dwarf planet" status. These are my opinions, and they are neither correct nor incorrect, as they are merely viewpoints. If you disagree with me, I will drag you down to a public library and horsewhip you with a VHS tape.

Given that people still ride horses (and whip other consenting adults) horsewhips aren't obsolete. Given that you can still buy VHS players, hook them up to modern hardware, and play tapes for which there is no DVD or Blu-Ray equivalent, VHS tapes aren't obsolete either. Given that you can not get most books for free online, libraries aren't obsolete, and only an elitist douchenozzle, libertarded wealth-licker, or Teahadist suicide boner would want to get rid of them. But given that most humans have evolved to be able to use logic, I would say YOU are obsolete.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[spun]

Nothing wrong with libraries, from these assholes perspective, it's government funded libraries that are accessible to all that are the problem. Anything that potentially helps a poor person, takes customers away from "legitimate" businesses, and "steals" from the rich must be destroyed utterly. Like unions.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[Monchanger]

Just because something is an opinion does not make it impervious to being factually incorrect. The viewpoint that women (or $yourrace) are less mentally capable than ($myrace) men was a generally accepted opinion. That opinion has been disproved in countless instances, as well as being proven morally wrong to all but the most retarded cultures. Opinions are not inconsequential or harmless when they influence reality as was the often the terrible case in this example- there's no place for "merely". We're not talking about whether chocolate or vanilla is the better ice-cream.

But this ignores the fact that Libraries are not and have never been (since their separation from simple archives), as c6502 premised above, just "storage". That statement is also a reversal of his earlier premises which admit that this one is overly simplistic by listing other activities of libraries. And since you cannot currently truly replace what libraries provide using "the web", they are quite obviously not yet obsolete, so yes such an opinion is wrong. You could argue about partial obsolescence or ways of improving libraries, but that's not what the prick is doing.

Re:I think libraries are as obsolete

[Count Fenring]

You're perfectly allowed to express that opinion - it's just stupid, and easily torn apart. Libraries (and their close cousins, archives) serve more purposes, and more importantly, serve the purposes you describe in an accountable, reliable manner, which the internet does not. "The internet will do it" is almost always a stupid-ass thing to say - the internet is a communications channel, linking disparate resources and data collections. It's not a magic "information locker" where everything is remembered forever.

Re:Huh? Have you been to a library lately?

[AmiMoJo]

My mum works in the Portsmouth library service and things are looking pretty dire for them. No new books, ancient PCs, the 5th round of staff layoffs...

The users tend to be those who are disenfranchised somehow. People without computers/internet at home. The retired who don't have much disposable income. School children who go as a class to give the teacher a half hour break. Asylum seekers needing to write and fax letters or contact family and friends via email. The homeless who want to get out of the cold.

Maybe other areas are doing better. To be fair Portsmouth is a shit hole and the council has pissed away millions of pounds that should have been spent on libraries (*cough* Millenium^W Spinnaker Tower *cough*) so maybe other places are better. The government's plan is to get volunteers to run libraries now anyway so basically the whole system is screwed.