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I think your discounting of a romantic notion, or the concept of "essential soul" overlooks the fact that this correlates highly with how the service is perceiv

I think your discounting of a romantic notion, or the concept of "essential soul" overlooks the fact that this correlates highly with how the service is perceived, and thus used, as well as how it is run, which is something you can see discussed various other places in the comments. Replacing the library, whose purpose is the best interests of its users, with a business, whose purpose is the best interests of its shareholders, and expecting it to go well, seems like the real pipe dream to me.

kaitai 8y ago
This is exactly right. There are two ingredients to making money: providing value and externalizing costs. When the value provided by an entity is essentially that it doesn't externalize costs -- that it's a sink for societal costs -- it doesn't make sense to commercialize it. We fund libraries because we want them to do unprofitable things.