I found this ignorant rant in my local newspaper’s (Pantagraph) Letters section this morning.
In this age of information, giant bookstores with coffee shops and reading areas, why do we need public libraries that suck up taxes instead of paying them? Is there anything that public libraries are doing that Barnes & Noble couldn’t at a fraction of the cost? They have lots of books, they could put in a bank of computers for public use, expand their reading areas and they certainly already are able to access any reading material the public libraries can.
I already wrote and sent my response (below):
I found this ignorant rant in my local newspaper’s (Pantagraph) Letters section this morning.
In this age of information, giant bookstores with coffee shops and reading areas, why do we need public libraries that suck up taxes instead of paying them? Is there anything that public libraries are doing that Barnes & Noble couldn’t at a fraction of the cost? They have lots of books, they could put in a bank of computers for public use, expand their reading areas and they certainly already are able to access any reading material the public libraries can.
I already wrote and sent my response (below):
I scanned Ron Hansen’s letter about shuttering libraries in favor of having chain bookstores provide such services, looking for rhetorical clues that would indicate satire. Sadly, all I found was evidence of gross ignorance. Hansen suggests that “we examine what it is that makes our public libraries valuable and contract it out to a profit-driven firm that is already more proficient at economically providing books, magazines, and other information services.”Let me say that I patronize local bookstores, and have been pleased by the help received. However, I doubt that bookstore employees would have been much help to the library patrons I offered assistance to in the past week: a disabled woman needing help filling out her online application for Medicare; Students who were working on reports about different countries and needed a recipe or a snippet of music; an environmental researcher who needed the inhabitants of a particular Bloomington property traced back to 1969; Parents looking for engaging activities for their students on a school holiday; Seniors looking for recreational reading in large print format.
Fifty-to-seventy percent of most library budgets are devoted to personnel costs. In most public libraries, the people who work at reference desks are required to have a master’s degree in library/information science (at minimum, a bachelor’s degree). In the private sector, employees with this level of education and expertise would command much higher salaries than they do as government employees.
Mr. Hansen’s proposal would result in the following scenarios: a) a drastic reduction of information, literacy and recreational reading services to those unable to pay; and b) a pay-as-you go model for basic information services that most taxpayers now take for granted. I’d suggest that Mr. Hansen head to his nearest library and get his facts straight.
Astroturf?
Conservatively, I estimate that a Barnes & Noble or other competitor could deliver the same services for as little as 25 percent of the current cost to the taxpayers. Why, we could put current library personnel into really useful employment. I’m working on the park districts, school systems, prison systems, police and fire departments with similar proposals.
I stopped subscribing to the Pantagraph when I realized all their editorials were well to the right of the Washington Times. And after reading that rant, don’t you wonder why it has nothing to do with the local libraries and just libraries in general as a waste of ‘taxpayer dollars’? Its probably one of those astroturf letters that conservative groups generate – I bet if you looked in other small town papers this weekend there are a bunch of ‘Robert Hansons’.
I’ve never understood this impression that public libraries are really expensive – I checked and I paid something like $15 a month in property taxes for my library ‘subscrption’. He’s estimating Barnes and Noble will let me take anything from the store home for only $3.50 a month? That’s half the price of a single paperback book! And they do all the things you listed that a bookstore wouldn’t bother with because its not profitable.
Libaries and bookstores, both important
Why do people such as Mr Hanson have a low view of libraries in favour of bookstores? Both libraries and bookstores serve their important functions in society. One does not necessarily replace the other. Could this negative opinion of libraries be a result of libraries being too old fashioned and inflexible and living in the past? Mr Hanson also may have experienced a better service at bookstores than in libraries. Anyway, if people find better services and materials at bookstores, they can continue to use bookstores instead of libraries.
Re:Astroturf?
Yeah…this guy’s address was Bourbonnais, which is about an hour and a half from Bloomington. Despite his nuttiness, I felt compelled to respond. Maybe I’ll write a library letter each month.
I don’t subscribe to the Pgraph–I get it free at my library!
Editorial is just Ignorant
This person does not understand how businesses or public insitutions operate or budget expenses.
There is no benefit for a bookstore to offer library-related services, such as computer access, photocopying, interlibrary loan service, or reference/instruction services. The straight costs to patrons would be overwhelming for most. And I do not know one bookstore that is the role of preserving local history, archiving older materials, and maintaining a variety of journal subscriptions.
This person is just an idiot, and has no ideas what libraries offer. He also does not understand how businesses make money.
What about the lose this would pose to business? :-).
Privatizing the services offered by the local library will most likely result in a pay as you go model. It is easy to see have this is a loss for the poor and the disenfranchized. Additionally, this is a loss for business. Small businesses use their local library liberally when starting up. There is a great deal of research that should go along with starting a business. Reasearch both in demands that are not beeing met, and in the regulations that a business is required to follow. The many forms that must be completed are also available at the local library. Once the business is established, there is still a need to return to the local library where tax forms and the instructions to fill them out can be found. Where materials explaining the differences between cash and accrual accounting maybe borrowed. Any number of business related subjects can be pursued. This only effects small business, but as I understand it that is almost all of the businesses in this country. There are very few businesses that are so successful as to be able to hire all of these services.
I thought the conservatives were supposed to be pro business
A Practical Programmer.
Re:What about the lose this would pose to business
That’s an awesome, well-thought out response, PP!
Barnes & Noble– l
This was discussed some time ago (1998) when American Libraries featured an article by Steve Coffman and Willard Dickerson suggesting libraries should be run like a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and by Renee Feinberg in “B&N: The New College Library” (_Library Journal_ 1 Feb 1998).
This idea is not a point of ignorance- when our own professional journals publish these kinds of articles trashing our librarians, it is no wonder the article ideas are later picked up by those who wish to trash libraries.
Part of my response is at the (See “Laughing Librarians” at the libref-l archives at: http://listserv.kent.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?S1=libref
“Notably lacking from their article are authoritative responses from
Barnes and Noble. Does B&N’s upper management really enjoy people who
come in all day, leaf through their copies, leave coffee stains on their
products, then depart without buying anything? Of course not. B&N is
there to make a profit. That’s it. There is no other reason for them
to exist other than to make a profit. If they stray away from
their mission, the technical term for what they will be is “bankrupt.”
This is why you seldom see B&N bookstores in low income areas, inner
cities and in rural areas. This is also why you see them at upper scale
malls. They are not there to serve the students, or the public, but
to sell books. They go where the book buyers are, not where the books are
needed.”
It is not the Robert Hansens of the world we have to be afraid of. It is others in our own profession, and our own professional library journals. When we trash our profession, others are willing to join in trashing us. Libraries are being contracted out by people who know the cost of everyting and the value of nothing. Libraries are being closed to reduce taxes used instead to pay higher costs for government contractors in other areas of government. And people are depending on Barnes & Noble because their political leaders and other librarians tell them it is just as good, and they won’t have to pay any more taxes any more.
Sigh. The comparison of libraries to B& N is not new.
Good ideas come and go, but bad ideas stay around forever.
Lee Hadden