Posted on 04/24/2005 9:49:51 PM PDT by SmithL
Books are fine, but why do we need taxpayer-funded bookmobiles?
For that matter, why do we even need taxpayer-funded libraries?
Hasn't anybody heard of the bookstore?
I thought government was to put out fires and defend the borders. Not to give us stuff to read. I mean, thanks to the private sector, it's already everywhere you look. If I simply bought one copy of every magazine offered at the corner Mobil station — covering everything from Kawasaki motorcycles to Esquire women we love to Forbes financial advice — I'd be reading for the next year.
Yet, now the poor taxpayers in Orland Park are stuck three times over. First, they paid for an unneeded library. Then, they paid for an unneeded bookmobile. And now, they must pay the $8.5 million bill to settle the lawsuit over the 2001 bookmobile crash that left a man brain-damaged.
All this foolishness could have been avoided if government had just stayed out of the library business in the first place.
But, you might say: "We need a library system so that our neediest citizens can read as much as the well-off! Books are expensive!"
Well, it depends. If you buy hard-cover and full-price, then, yes, books can be expensive. Last Monday I bought "An Incomplete Education," the 1995 edition, by Judy Jones and William Wilson, off the shelf at the Borders bookstore in Evanston.
Later, looking at the receipt, I must admit I felt pretty stupid. List price for the book was $32.50. Adding tax, the total was $35.34. If books were always so expensive, there might be a case for keeping libraries. (Not bookmobiles.)
But, you see, there now exists Amazon.com, where you can order nearly any book you can think of for a bargain price, and in less than a minute. I kid you not. A couple of days after my purchase, I made a sample buy on Amazon to see the alternative price.
I have ordered from Amazon in the past, so they already have my billing (home) address, my work (delivery) address and my credit card number. I typed "Incomplete Education" into the search field. The book popped up as $21.45 new.
Trying to demonstrate thrift, I clicked on "used." I found a copy for $6.25. The seller labeled the condition as "very good." In other words: "crisp/clean/unmarked pages, in firm binding, with straight spine. Minor wear/scuffing to dust jacket. Minor edge wear."
This was good enough for me. I want to read the book, not mount it in a glass case.
Postage was another $3.95, for a total of $10.20. If I had proceeded, I could have had the book delivered to me at work by this coming Tuesday, for a savings from Borders of $22.30.
And you know how much time this order would have taken me? I counted the seconds: 31.
An excellent book (delivered to your desk, no less) for $10.20. Hmm. That sounds like a bargain to me. Let's do some math here. Divided by the 55,000 residents of Orland Park, the $8.5 million bookmobile settlement comes to $155 apiece. By my calculations, with that money a family of four could have bought 61 books from Amazon.
Now, instead, they have to sink it into a boondoggle.
There's another reason citizens should buy books rather than borrow them from a library. In my opinion, the only good books are those worth keeping. Then, in the future, you can return for the pleasure of rereading; or to refresh your memory about a certain quote; or to reprint a compelling passage for a column like this one.
If a book isn't worth keeping, it probably isn't worth reading in the first place.
Consider my new book. "An Incomplete Education" is just the reference for people like me who didn't pay attention in college. It's divided into 12 chapters: American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science and World History.
If you don't know something, you can just dip into the book and fake it. For instance, did you miss the movie "Citizen Kane"? Then read the synopsis here. It tells you what the fuss was back then and what the fuss is today. Now you can utter "Rosebud" with the best of them.
Another example: Suppose you get invited to a royal wedding and quickly have to learn the hierarchy of British peerage. Per my book, the mnemonic to remember is "Do men ever visit Boston?" Take the first letter of each word and you can impress for success: duke, marquis, earl, viscount and baron.
The book also gives you crucial pronunciation information. For example, despite all logic, viscount is pronounced VYE-count. I knew that one. But I didn't know this: Marquis is pronounced MAR-kwiss.
Finally, the book lists some really useful foreign phrases, such as the French "nostalgie de la boue." It means "yearning for the mud."
As the authors explain, the phrase refers to wallowing by a person you would have thought was above such a things — "particularly in a guess-who's-sleeping-with-whom context."
I don't know when, I don't know how, but someday I simply have got to work that delicious phrase into a column. And to think I never would have heard of it if not for "An Incomplete Education." If you can't afford $10.20 to buy such a valuable book, then you've got bigger problems than the price of books.
So, a memo to Orland Park: Dump the bookmobile. And maybe dump the whole library too. Let your citizens keep their tax money and buy their own books. It's the American way.
.....it's at the expense of ALL taxpayers.
Maybe the problem is with you and not with the librarians ?
Maybe he does not bath?
Unless they can access the Internet for free in the library? :)
I suspect out Libertarian does not bath and librarians are trying to avoid him.
Nope, not a straw man at all. In fact, it's common enough that the "library lady" is a stereotype.
Libraries may have changed a lot in the last few years, but the staff of most libraries are generally still civil service hires, and it usually shows. I'm telling you that most librarians have jobs to do and job priority generally doesn't include customer service. And pointing to signs or computers isn't customer service.
I don't dispute that your library is different, or that your staff is different. But my experience at every library I've visited has been that there are some helpful workers who don't know where stuff is, and older workers who do know where stuff is, and don't want to deal with patrons. If I had a nickel for every annoyed sigh I'd heard when asking where collection X was...and even though the collections had moved from where the signs were indicating.
"I'm okay with private libraries..."
I don't recall why I didn't reply to your post long ago (probably got involved in some other thread), but when we collaboratively rule the world, I'll take you up on your offer.
libraries are more than just lending.
Libraries are to preserve ALL knowledg all opinion all of it.
(this is why liberals write like mad men)
The true libraries job is not to choose but to preserve all.
Interesting ping.
Libraries are great places for research. They have collections of books that would cost you a small fortune. I love libraries and always have. We didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up so I went to the library for my books.
"Well, I think it is one of the few things our government has invested wisely in. I used to skip school and spend all day at the library, reading ."
I wasn't very interested in reading until one of my seventh grade teachers read a science fiction book called "A Wrinkle in Time" and then I was hooked. I couldn't stay out of the library and still read two or three a week if I've got time.
First public library; Library of Alexandria 300 BC
First librarian; Aristotle
http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html
"I suspect out Libertarian does not bath and librarians are trying to avoid him."
AP, if you disagreed reasonably with folks, it'd be one thing. But you simply feel compelled to insult and cannot form a cogent response other than that. You're a real negative to this board in your current role.
MSR, it may well be that there are libraries that are worth keeping. But they would probably be supported by the community in a private setting ala NPR fund drives, or membership fees, too. Generally, if only essential public services are funded, libraries are not the last to be axed. They're the first. And I honestly think that most non-essential public services should be privatized. It's not a bias against libraries. Libraries were private long before they were public, and while public libraries are commonplace today, that doesn't mean they're appropriately funded by taking other people's money for the benefit of a few or even a whole lot. Majority rule, even in a way you like, doesn't make redistributionism somehow right. Government pointing a gun to the head of people to take their money for use by other people should be an ability government is only allowed to use sparingly. If I robbed you at gunpoint to buy a book, even to leave it for loan in my hallway bookshelf, you'd still be robbed and pissed.
I once got right through to the front of a DMV line and got my license renewed in 5 minutes. The DMV still sucks.
Look, I think if we looked at the amount of folks who benefit from libraries there would certainly be more average people benefitting per buck than those who receive free medical care or welfare or other non-essential services. But that lots of folks benefit does not somehow make taxation for this non-essential service less than redistributionism for the welfare of those people benefitting.
My objection to public funding for libraries is not due to some hatred for library staff. It's my judgment that, no matter how charitable the intent or productive the result, it is simply wrong to take people's money to use in delivering nonessential services to others through government, especially services that private industry and free association can deliver more efficiently.
Ever been so poor you didn't have a credit card?
Many of these folks do business with money orders.
Because the homeless need a place to slump for hours while they thumb through Barron's.
That sounds like "cutting off your nose to spite your face".
How could "private industry" and "free association" more efficiently provide the services offered by the public library?
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