This is such an absurd comment I have to counter it.
The library near me is wonderful, and my wife regularly goes there just because of how peaceful it is and how broad their e-book collection is for her bus rides. I'm in a normal no-name township, nothing particularly wealthy. Same goes for the library where I grew up, and from visits back, it's in about the same state. Volunteer work there was integral to my growing up, and accessibility to the books there was 100% of the reason I became such an avid reader.
Just because you don't like libraries, and you may have seen some bad ones, doesn't mean you should seek to remove one of the remaining bastions of government services that purely serve to better the quality of life accessible to all. (I'd cite PBS as well)
I'd say the same about museums. To abscond from a public duty to educate and provide information, we religate ourselves to the unfortunately trend of a citizenship lacking in critical thinking and inquisitiveness.
If govt spending is such a key issue, it's mind-boggling that one would focus on such trivial non-%'s as opposed to the largest allocations, of which there are MANY well-discussed inefficiencies.
I live in a wealthy (high COL, at least) area, and I see what the GP referred to.
Housing here is very expensive, ergo, living spaces are small, so I tried to go to the library to get some "real studying" done on my own time — every time the city library was slap full (all booths and chairs occupied) with 95% homeless folk.
I love and appreciate city run libraries but IME they are directly suffering from the lack of social support and affordable housing to that portion of the population.
My first job was in a superb suburban library in the Midwest which was open from 9am-9pm (except on sundays which was noon-5pm).
However I now live in NYC, the city that never sleeps, and can’t believe that local libraries in Manhattan are generally open 10am-6pm making them hard for students to visit if they have extra-curricular activities and nearly impossible for anyone working to ever take advantage. The hours alone seem to indicate the libraries are mostly for the retired or unemployed.
You're getting heavily downvoted but at least here in san jose what you're saying is true. Many libraries are now literal homeless shelters. My wife is a librarian and her libarary just became a shelter despite the constant problems that are the homeless. She has to clean human shit off the childrens' computers but they keep inviting this mess in.
Getting rid of public funding for libraries because homeless people seek shelter there only deprives the homeless of shelter (which they have a right to, however badly they smell) and it deprives the public of the amenities public libraries provide. It doesn't solve any problems.
If so many people have such a problem with homeless people in libraries, maybe their city needs more homeless shelters that serve the same needs. I mean, they camp out under bridges and overpasses as well, should we demolish the roads too?
>Maybe we should. These days, public libraries are little more than homeless shelters.
Odd, I've been in plenty of public libraries, and I've been able to access a number of useful services in them, and none have been homeless shelters, either literally or figuratively.
> and printed books are largely irrelevant in today's world anyway
No they're not, no more than movies, television, radio, or any other form of media that exists despite digital media.
Maybe your personal, limited experience doesn't scale up to a general view of human culture as well as you think it does.
Jeepers what a cruel and ill-informed person you are. As someone who works in a public library in some places the public library is the only institution left to be available for the benefit of the underrepresented folks like homeless.
Our print book circulation remains strong regardless of other electronic services we provide. There are millions of books that never get e-book versions.
Most museums and public libraries are indeed operated with non-profit organizations responsible to the local government authority (including mine).
You should get yourself into a library as soon as possible.
As it turns out, homeless people can't easily keep laptops on them and afford to hang out at Starbucks all day. Public libraries give them and other low income people opportunities to develop skills and education, and electronic resources to find a long-term career that can take them out of poverty.
If that is truly a massive trend (and it seems like it would be reasonably easy to measure), the current setup of libraries is not that conducive to employment preparation (mine still features books on Macromedia Flash and Office XP).
One can probably run it more efficiently as an Internet access room at a local community center, with access to printing/faxing/tutoring/resume building and other services.
And, just as you said, some zip codes will benefit from this setup more than others.
I am sorry you have had bad experiences with public libraries. My local (suburban) public library does not resemble a homeless shelter. The population therein usually consists of younger (15-25) and older (50+) people who are generally clean and quiet. If physical books were irrelevant, publishers would all be out of business, and also the books I'm looking for in the library would never be unavailable due to already being borrowed by another user.
