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Part of the pleasure is simply going there and shuffling through books. I think many of us will have such fond memories as children. Instead we now promote all

Part of the pleasure is simply going there and shuffling through books. I think many of us will have such fond memories as children. Instead we now promote all possible services to the doorstep. Delivery people get paid minimum wage doing this kind of ship. Customers don’t even see the cost accumulated of all those delivery services. All this so that everyone stays at home and never ever meet people living next door, or even worse, stand in a line for two minutes to checkout books and have to go through the purgatory of smiling to the librarians working there. I hate it so so much. I hate that other privileged white software dev as I am continuously stumble upon such ideas and see them as great, when it kills communities even more.

objectivetruth 6y ago
All of these comments are perfectly valid once the pandemic is completely over. Until then, this attitude is pretty dismissive of the underpaid library workers that have to stand there and breathe in the virus that the public is bringing in. Most libraries are only offering curbside pickup right now in an effort to protect the staff.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
"Part of the pleasure is simply going there and shuffling through books." The new "libraries of the future" that are being built tend to hide most of the books in closed stacks. You kind of already have to know what you are looking for, so that you can put in a request to have the book brought from the stacks to the reservation shelf. Even when libraries these days are intentionally being built as a space for the community to meet (like Helsinki’s Oodi library), books are a pretty small part of their overall mission.