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Ah, Rigo. Sweeter than honey. 😉
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Picknar, Rodrigo and Jo got back in the car and after a bit of driving Picknar asked, “what’s the errand?” Rodrigo said, “just something quick. And… here we are.” They could see through the windshield that it was a library, and Picknar asked, “ah. A library. What kind of collection is it?” From the backseat, Jo said, “what do you mean, ‘what kind of a collection is it’? Val, you are off your rocker! It’s a fucking library.” Rodrigo calmly said, “books, my friend books.” They got out of the car and Picknar asked, “don’t you have every book on the planet on your communication device?” Further exasperated, Jo said, “they’re ‘smart phones,’ Val. You know this!” Rodrigo said, “I could, but I don’t have any books on my phone because I find pleasure in the tactile experience.” Put off by his comment, Jo said, “is that some kind of creepy come-on? ‘Pleasure in the tactile experience.’ do girls ever fall for that line?” Rodrigo replied, “actually sweet Jo, I’m gay.” Curious, Jo asked, “really? So, do men ever fall for that line?” Slyly grinning, Rodrigo said, “well, Ii mean… yeah. you have met men, right?”
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I’m with Rigo. The variety of sensations one can get from a printed book is remarkable. I understand the desire to take up less room in one’s house, but putting all your books on your phone denies me the pleasure of casually scanning your library, thus learning more about you. And you about me.
Plus, not every book online is free, but every book at the library is.
Well, not really… But you’re forced to pay for it whether you want it or not, and they make the bookwork required for you to figure out how much you’re paying for it so complicated that hardly anybody bothers…
And most people confuse “I don’t know what it costs me” with “free”.
Library costs, in the total scope of public funding, are “free” for any sane person’s viewpoint. And that’s even before looking at the benefits from having libraries.
There have been several studies on the return on investment of funding libraries, and they typically find that the libraries generate about five times the dollar value of their funding in the value of their services that your average taxpayer receives. Libraries also increase the amount of people going to businesses in the area.
So, for every tax dollar your community spends on libraries, the average tax payer saves five through their services. Libraries cost less than free, no matter how you look at it.
(Click my name if you’d like to read a study)
I didn’t say they weren’t often a good deal. If they weren’t, then privately-funded, public libraries wouldn’t be a thing. Which they most certainly are. I said you do have to pay for them, and you don’t know what they cost.
And the fact that it takes complex studies to figure out their cost-benefit ratio is exactly my point.
Furthermore, even when you do a study, there are factors that are practically impossible to nail down:
You can’t just assume that the money collected to run the library would otherwise earn a return of zero. Yes, you’ve got an average 5X return on what you put into the library. That may or may not be better than what the money would otherwise be invested in. Collecting ROI data on things that never got done is… Challenging…
And then, on top of that, it tends to suppress innovation. Because all the customers for those services have to pay for the library no matter what, they might as well use it. And any more-efficient alternatives to libraries that people think of don’t get the benefit of automatic revenue, so they have a much harder time gaining traction because their lower cost is irrelevant when their potential customers are forced to buy something else that can manage to do the job.
Which, again, is not to say that public libraries aren’t currently a good deal… Just that it’s very difficult to know, and it is definitely a mistake to conflate “I don’t know what it costs” with “It costs nothing.”
Head over to bastiat.org and check out “That which is seen, and that which is not seen” for well though-out analysis of this and other, common economic tarpits like “the broken window fallacy.”
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“They have libraries for fucking?”
“Want to borrow the Kama Sutra?”
To be fair, most men I know DON’T read. Sadly.
My own personal library consists of 50% now out of print books. (At last count, over 7000.)
Ppl are either astonished or terrified when they see it.
You can also get a lot of ebooks. I have 8,000 or so. Not as impressive as paper books to be sure.
I began with ebooks about 10 yrs ago I think. Some were free, some cost a few $$.
I even read a few.. imagine my face the day I opened my ipad to find they’d ALL been removed.
I decided that I wouldn’t be caught like that again. After all, no one comes into my house when I’m gone, to take my books.
I used to work at the local public library, in children’s reference. One day I got a call from an older lady asking if we had any books. I asked what subject she wanted to know about and she replied, “Any books. I heard they were getting rid of books.” I assured her that we still had plenty of books. I’m guessing she thought they were all going to be digital.
We’re not getting rid of books but we ARE disposing of sanity and common sense just as fast as we can shovel. When a third of Americans don’t know the Earth orbits the sun, you can see the “progress” made to turn every person on the planet into the intellectual equivalent of an equal mass of blue-green algae. When people forget how to read, what use are books going to be, eh?
Every library I’ve been in since the 90’s rarely have the books I’m looking for.
You see, I don’t usually read best sellers.
I’m still looking for some books I read as a preteen… can NOT find those. I got my love for wild animals from them. And much of my knowledge of the animals from them too.
I would love to know which titles you are looking for.
(I’m having problems posting. If I edit, it tajes ne to my most previous page )
Iirc, the books were titled with the animal’s latin name, which taught the 11 yr old me some Latin and got me taking it for 3 yrs in high school!
So the book on the red fox (might have been titled exactly that!) or Vulpes Vulpes.
It was a married couple who wrote these and there were a LOT. They weren’t Disney-fied (written far before Disney World). I remember a wolverine was one, and there was a chickadee, I believe, too.
It has been 60 yrs! I keep remembering Kirkegaard as the authors’ last name. (The only author of that nane I’ve ever read, so it must be true.) The animals were all US based. (Again, iirc.)
I’d love it if you can find them! In any form. (I ended up working in that very library for 3 yrs as a after school program.) The books were all hardcover. I don’t think they were ever paper back. Also, there was killing in order to eat in it, so NOT in the children’s part of the library.
The authors were committed to Reality, not for the sake of titillation.
I think there was a kingfisher too! I remember it went thru waterfalls.