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.
Welcome!
Many of the libraries in small towns of the country were originally founded by private charities. It was a very wise charity, because it requires the beneficiaries to make a positive response on their part: they must actually go in and read. No one can read for someone else.
A Bookmobile, though, is a waste. It would be better if the books were simply mailed to shut-ins, or brought by friends.
Our state (NJ) requires that each town hoave a library, whether they need one or not. Libraries have videotapes, which are already available from rental places. No reason for that.
I think the point he was making is that they are not free. The taxpayers are paying for them.
In Georgia, it's statewide. In fact, you can check out a book in Atlanta, and return it in Savannah. If someone moves and forgets to return a book, it is not problem. Just find the library in your new town and take it back there.
This has got to be the stupidest article I've read in a while.
I am 100% certain that not everyone in the country shares your exact same reading habits of reading only technical books and philosophy, so you should have stated for me pickings are slim.
If that was the concept of the modern library, I would be throwing bricks at this columnist myself. But he is spot on with his column.
You don't get out much lately, do you.
They are obviously not using the library facilities other than the rest rooms and the heated space in winter, by they can not be kicked out. They make it impossible for taxpaying citizens to use the library.
These are two of the three reasons I can think of why I stopped using the "public library" when my daughter was six and started devouring books at an alarming pace. That was in 1977.
I have many more responses to wade through in this thread, but the trend is clear: there are widely divergent differences of opinion based on unconscious provincialism, of which most of us are unaware. The dichotomy between the "red" and the "blue" areas. It's like different universes, as wide as the chasm between muslims and civilized people.
I grew up in San Francisco, California, and if libraries today were like the libraries then, this whole discussion would not be necessary.
The difference is that libraries today, in the bluest of states have degenerated into politically correct and pervert indoctrination centers. There is no other way to say it. But that almost certainly is not true of libraries in other areas of the country, hence the seemingly snseless contradictions in opinion. Both sides are right (including the author of the original column) depending on their geographical location. To be specific...
In the old days, libraries presented knowlege in book form to satisfy every level of need. If individuals limited their scope of knowlege, they always had the option of a second chance at learning or a third.
Then Libraries devolved to catering to the least common denominator over time, made worse by activism driving what was suitable or desireable, sliding into the bottomless pit of perversion and decay: Heather has two Mommies, Perversion is good for you, or Bush planned and executed 911.
Ecology and environmentalism as the new religion became the standard for what needed to be known and leaned.
Mind you, books of opposing views were published, too, but it was not deemed necessary to include them among the new knowlege palace. They simple were not there.
Whereas, before, one could find the complete technical plans for the construction of the Panama Canal, afterwards it was considered too obscure and "unpopular" to cater to that segment of knowlege, so it was erased as an option forever. Same with all the sciences: mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, thermodynamics, Engineering, transportation. Same with facts: History, culture, religion, philosophy. All are now the exclusive venue of formal education. Outside of universities, forget it.
But you can find dozens of volumes on aromatherapy, candles and hallucinogens.
My last four attempts at visiting the library for useful, real world information in book form were a dismal failure. Zero for four. The message was clear: you need crap? Go to the public library. You need real-world useful knowlege? Buy your own freakin' books!
Having the taxpayers pay out millions, as the result of a "bookmobile" accident, is a whole other topic that can best be dealt with under "catering to losers" and "bottom feeders"
Therein lies the mindset of a limited mind, circumscribed by ignorance.
Once upon a time, libraries catered to all levels of knowlege competence.
You think the Library of Alexandria limited itself to Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and I-don't-know-what studies?
There are many things that I would eliminate from the budgets of local governments before I would ax the public library.
Of course you would. So long as you feel thatyou are getting more out of the system than you are putting in. All that would change instantly if you felt otherwise.
I think that's a rhetorical question. It is self-evident.
Nuts and fruitcakes would not be deciding what books to get; and which ones not to. The user gets to decide.
And idiot public "employees" might have to get a real job.
Not so. I mentioned my reading preferences as an example. That's what I spend 95% of my reading time on. I just don't have time for everything. I'm interested in everything from history to biology and have perused dozens of sections in our local libraries and other libraries when I travel. They seem to contain mostly donated books. The kind that people didn't want to clutter up their own bookshelf with, most certainly not scholarly works.
This hasn't always been the case. 40 years ago, I grew up in a town of 40,000. Had the best little library I've every seen. Went back recently and it like everything else in this country is in an academic decline.
"The tax dollars would usually be spent in a better way."
I think I hear Muslims say that about American public libraries, too.
No not much. The husband won't give me any money and beats me with a stick when I put shoes on. Oh well, life could be worse. I could be pregnant!
In all the various jobs and trades I worked in I used the invaluable library resources to greatly aid my education and increase my skill level.
Then there where all those wonderful hours of far away worlds and different people and different times.
The wonderful quite rainy days of summer when a nine year old kid could leave harsh hectic reality and drift down a lazy river on a raft.
Or maybe climb on a ship to the stars, walk the game fields of Africa.
Maybe choose to witness with the mind's eye the great hardships ,victories and sacrifices made by the soldiers statesmen ,scientists and inventors as they fought to form and keep this great nation.
The price of a ticket on all these adventures was that of a simple free, yet priceless library card.
My eternal gratitude. MRN
I think that other folks have rightly pointed out the Gutenberg Project, Google, and myriad other internet public domain publishers abound. If they haven't, I am here to do that now. Additionally, as I mentioned, private libraries existed long before public. Subscription book clubs and booksellers are all over the place. And book sharing clubs would be far more commonplace without libraries to supersede their primary function. You may not have heard of them, but I know that overseas, many hotels and businesses whose employees and residents don't want to pony up for English language books in non-English-speaking countries actually have shelves full of books for folks to share, on the honor system.
The first, internet p.d. collections, are in place because libraries don't deliver that efficiently--most libraries don't have a full public domain collection. The second businesses are all but gone, and you can bet they would be as profitable as Blockbuster if there were for-profit libraries that didn't have to compete with government ones. Finally, one has to wonder how much better book subscription clubs, Barnes and Nobles, Borders, and the rest would do on price if they were not constantly undercut by the free libraries provided by the government.
And I can't believe that you referred to a bedrock principle of conservatism as 'cutting off your nose to spite your face.' I happen to think that cliche applies to this kind of "legislating good." It is clearly against conservative principles to do good through government with other people's money, no matter how many people think it's good. Conservatives think government taxation is an evil in and of itself that should be only used in ways that are proper AND necessary. Libraries are no necessity.
Freemarketeers are little more than mental 4 year olds in adult bodies. In over 4,000 years of written human history not one of them has ever run or founded a nation. What they don't know or understand about societies would fill every library in the world to overflowing.
> read more books then you have seen
Wow. Too bad some good spelling did not rub off.
The bulk of funding for public libraries is local. There is no federal or state law that requires each community to provide a library for its residents nor that stipulates the quality of the library. Local people vote to tax themselves to provide the service. If communities did not consider public libraries to be worthwhile resources, they wouldn't exist.
Whether "private industry" and "free association" can more efficiently provide the services offered by the public library is a matter of opinion. I submit that if the alternatives you suggest were more efficient then it would be the libraries in danger of extinction. Why would we tax ourselves to provide something where a demand did not exist?
I found the reference to federal taxes raised through tariffs, in your link, interesting. Of course that Constitutionally mandated method of raising money for government has gone the way of the dodo. But that is a subject for another discussion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.