5 ms·

Sure, but I don't know about 'most of the rest of the [developed] world', which apparently you do.

by dalke 11y ago

kragen 11y ago
My brief visits to France, England, Japan, and Brazil have left me deeply unimpressed with their public library systems. Here in Argentina there are bookstores everywhere but they sell almost exclusively fiction (including astrology, psychology, revisionist history, etc.; maybe "matters of opinion" is a more charitable term) and the library system is a poor shadow of what I'm used to even in the poor parts of the US. And of course Micronesia's library system was a joke when I was there, but it doesn't count as "developed".
- dalke 11y ago
  Based on your clarification, it appears that your comments are opinion based on a couple of brief personal experiences. From your original comment I assumed you were making a broader and more definite statement. Thank you for correcting my assumption. Regarding the English library system, as JupiterMoon pointed out, the British library provides interlibrary loan services, which is the topic at hand. In fact, I've used it from Sweden.
  - kragen 11y ago
    Interlibrary loan services are wonderful. They were a lifesaver when I lived in a small town of 40,000 people 400 km away from the nearest "city" (of 120,000 people). But they are not a substitute for being able to browse the stacks; it's like the difference between using a web browser and a command-line anonymous FTP client.
    - dalke 11y ago
      I think you are voicing a frustration here which is not coupled to your earlier point. If I am wrong about my interpretation, let me point out that the US system isn't especially better than other developed countries in this respect. For example, the local college library to where I went to high school in Miami requires a fee to enter the library. http://library.miami.edu/policies/non-um-patron-access/ http://library.miami.edu/policies/non-um-patron-access/ . (As a student in an advanced class, we got a special pass to allow us to do research in the library.) A member of the public can only visit the Stanford university library for free for 7 days of the year (http://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/visitor-access-and-borrowing http://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/visi... ). You mention open stacks, and I fully appreciate the joy of being able to browse. However, your enthusiasm about any US experience must be tempered. Many US academic libraries have off-campus shelving (eg, https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/using-the-library/request-books-from-off-campus-shelving/ https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/using-the-library/request-b... and http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/junk.Shelving/WorkingGroup.html http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/junk.Shelving/Wor... ). Quoting from the last of those two URLs: > Many universities, including Harvard, have successfully adopted off-campus shelving as a way to meet both their shelving and preservation needs.* Such shelving costs a tenth of what on-campus shelving costs, and it provides nearly ideal conditions for the long-term preservation of library materials. The principal disadvantage of off-campus shelving is that readers cannot browse the material at these facilities. Perhaps it's more like using gopher than a web brower. ;)
      - kragen 11y ago
        The library is the heart of a university, of course, and generally the best libraries are university libraries. But public libraries are also important — not only for reasons like Stanford's sad policy (and when I visited UPenn one night, they wouldn't even let me into the library because I wasn't a student there, even though I was accompanied by a student) but also because they exist in places where universities don't. My disappointment in the library systems of other countries that I've visited is composed of two parts: first, there are many fewer and poorer public libraries than in the US; second, there are many fewer and poorer universities than in the US, which limits the available university libraries sharply. It wouldn't surprise me if Sweden were better than the US in this regard. Sweden has an excellent welfare state, a world-class university system, and if I'm not mistaken, a centuries-long tradition of universal literacy. But much of the developed world does not have this advantage; Germany, Norway, Benelux, Finland, Switzerland, Canada, Iceland, Israel, and possibly Austria share these attributes, but the US and UK do not have a reasonable welfare state, and Ireland, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Japan do not have the long tradition of universal literacy, although of course their educated elites have been literate for over a millennium, producing a rich literature¹. Countries outside this group (except possibly Singapore and Taiwan) do not even have a world-class university system. That means that in Brazil, mainland China, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Brunei, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Oman, Czech, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and even Hungary, Russia, and Greece, you won't even find the kind of university where you're thinking to look for a good library, let alone the kind of university library you're thinking of. Maybe they have good public libraries (I hear Estonia's public library system is particularly good) but generally I expect not. But these are surely developed countries. ¹ Yes, before a century or two ago the educated elite of Australia and New Zealand lived in England, so perhaps that's a bit of a stretch.
        dalke 11y ago
        I feel like you have switched contexts, without enough notice. These comments started because of an article about scientists working around copyright restrictions. This thread started off as a complaint about the cost of getting access to foundational papers in a research field. I pointed out a cheaper mechanism for getting access, via the local library. Hence, I thought that's what you were talking about, which is why my examples were to research libraries in the US. I'm going to go back to your original statement, which is "I think people in the US don't realize how much better the US library system is than most of the rest of the world. Even the developed world!" I think most people are aware that the US is a wealthy country, and therefore expect that the US library system should be above the world average. That is what you elaborated on now. But your original statement suggested that the library quality in the US was appreciably above what one would expect for a country as rich as the US. Yet you listed a number of countries which are comparable in wealth to the US, and which have comparable library systems. (Germany, the Nordic countries, etc.) Therefore, it doesn't seem like the US's library system is better than what most people would expect. Had you said "The US has a good library system", I would not have asked for clarification. But you said people in the US don't know just how good it is, even when compared to countries on a similar economic level. Which doesn't appear to be the case.

Sure, but I don't know about 'most of the rest of the [developed] world', which apparently you do.

by dalke 11y ago

Sure, but I don't know about 'most of the rest of the [developed] world', which apparently you do.

My brief visits to France, England, Japan, and Brazil have left me deeply unimpressed with their public library systems. Here in Argentina there are bookstores everywhere but they sell almost exclusively fiction (including astrology, psychology, revisionist history, etc.; maybe "matters of opinion" is a more charitable term) and the library system is a poor shadow of what I'm used to even in the poor parts of the US. And of course Micronesia's library system was a joke when I was there, but it doesn't count as "developed".

dalke 11y ago
Based on your clarification, it appears that your comments are opinion based on a couple of brief personal experiences. From your original comment I assumed you were making a broader and more definite statement. Thank you for correcting my assumption. Regarding the English library system, as JupiterMoon pointed out, the British library provides interlibrary loan services, which is the topic at hand. In fact, I've used it from Sweden.
- kragen 11y ago
  Interlibrary loan services are wonderful. They were a lifesaver when I lived in a small town of 40,000 people 400 km away from the nearest "city" (of 120,000 people). But they are not a substitute for being able to browse the stacks; it's like the difference between using a web browser and a command-line anonymous FTP client.
  - dalke 11y ago
    I think you are voicing a frustration here which is not coupled to your earlier point. If I am wrong about my interpretation, let me point out that the US system isn't especially better than other developed countries in this respect. For example, the local college library to where I went to high school in Miami requires a fee to enter the library. http://library.miami.edu/policies/non-um-patron-access/ http://library.miami.edu/policies/non-um-patron-access/ . (As a student in an advanced class, we got a special pass to allow us to do research in the library.) A member of the public can only visit the Stanford university library for free for 7 days of the year (http://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/visitor-access-and-borrowing http://library.stanford.edu/using/access-and-privileges/visi... ). You mention open stacks, and I fully appreciate the joy of being able to browse. However, your enthusiasm about any US experience must be tempered. Many US academic libraries have off-campus shelving (eg, https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/using-the-library/request-books-from-off-campus-shelving/ https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/using-the-library/request-b... and http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/junk.Shelving/WorkingGroup.html http://www.library.yale.edu/Administration/junk.Shelving/Wor... ). Quoting from the last of those two URLs: > Many universities, including Harvard, have successfully adopted off-campus shelving as a way to meet both their shelving and preservation needs.* Such shelving costs a tenth of what on-campus shelving costs, and it provides nearly ideal conditions for the long-term preservation of library materials. The principal disadvantage of off-campus shelving is that readers cannot browse the material at these facilities. Perhaps it's more like using gopher than a web brower. ;)
    - kragen 11y ago
      The library is the heart of a university, of course, and generally the best libraries are university libraries. But public libraries are also important — not only for reasons like Stanford's sad policy (and when I visited UPenn one night, they wouldn't even let me into the library because I wasn't a student there, even though I was accompanied by a student) but also because they exist in places where universities don't. My disappointment in the library systems of other countries that I've visited is composed of two parts: first, there are many fewer and poorer public libraries than in the US; second, there are many fewer and poorer universities than in the US, which limits the available university libraries sharply. It wouldn't surprise me if Sweden were better than the US in this regard. Sweden has an excellent welfare state, a world-class university system, and if I'm not mistaken, a centuries-long tradition of universal literacy. But much of the developed world does not have this advantage; Germany, Norway, Benelux, Finland, Switzerland, Canada, Iceland, Israel, and possibly Austria share these attributes, but the US and UK do not have a reasonable welfare state, and Ireland, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Japan do not have the long tradition of universal literacy, although of course their educated elites have been literate for over a millennium, producing a rich literature¹. Countries outside this group (except possibly Singapore and Taiwan) do not even have a world-class university system. That means that in Brazil, mainland China, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Brunei, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Oman, Czech, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malaysia, Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and even Hungary, Russia, and Greece, you won't even find the kind of university where you're thinking to look for a good library, let alone the kind of university library you're thinking of. Maybe they have good public libraries (I hear Estonia's public library system is particularly good) but generally I expect not. But these are surely developed countries. ¹ Yes, before a century or two ago the educated elite of Australia and New Zealand lived in England, so perhaps that's a bit of a stretch.
      - dalke 11y ago
        I feel like you have switched contexts, without enough notice. These comments started because of an article about scientists working around copyright restrictions. This thread started off as a complaint about the cost of getting access to foundational papers in a research field. I pointed out a cheaper mechanism for getting access, via the local library. Hence, I thought that's what you were talking about, which is why my examples were to research libraries in the US. I'm going to go back to your original statement, which is "I think people in the US don't realize how much better the US library system is than most of the rest of the world. Even the developed world!" I think most people are aware that the US is a wealthy country, and therefore expect that the US library system should be above the world average. That is what you elaborated on now. But your original statement suggested that the library quality in the US was appreciably above what one would expect for a country as rich as the US. Yet you listed a number of countries which are comparable in wealth to the US, and which have comparable library systems. (Germany, the Nordic countries, etc.) Therefore, it doesn't seem like the US's library system is better than what most people would expect. Had you said "The US has a good library system", I would not have asked for clarification. But you said people in the US don't know just how good it is, even when compared to countries on a similar economic level. Which doesn't appear to be the case.