4 ms·

Modern public libraries are mostly just public entertainment centers for the latest movies, video games, and ghostwritten novels. In many library systems, the b

Modern public libraries are mostly just public entertainment centers for the latest movies, video games, and ghostwritten novels. In many library systems, the books that were the whole foundational reason for their existence have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries.) Even very notorious classical works are frequently available only though ILL and often not even then. I honestly don't have much sympathy for them. If the situation is that bad for classical works, the situation for works of niche technical, scientific, and local merit is even worse. The amount of works that have been irretrievably lost because they were deliberately destroyed by public librarians is enormous. They've burned through every bit of credit and faith I had for them. I do not see any value in public repositories of the latest John Grisham novels or the latest $POLITICIAN_X campaign book that will be forgotten in six months. The public should not be paying for them.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
You seem to be blaming public libraries for giving the public what they want. I agree that public consumption has been trending anti-intellectual but I don't see how libraries are to blame. Your ire should be directed at modern society. Unfortunately that's a rather broad and manifold thing to dissect to determine where the problems lie.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  People have always loved pulp fiction. I love pulp fiction. Reading pulp fiction has always been popular. That doesn't mean it belongs in libraries. Librarians made a conscious decision to shift their focus into providing public entertainment rather than public education. We went from the libraries also providing our "pulp fiction" as an extra service(for lack of a better word) to practically only providing our pulp fiction, and focusing almost entirely on that. Even in terms of cultural trends, librarians have a shared responsibility to guide the public. And they did. These decisions are not made solely based on the least-checked-out books but also on ideological factors - what they think is good for the public. To my larger point, you cannot expect me to shed tears over publishers harming your ability to lend books because of your status as the sacred gatekeeper of public education when you've already abdicated that role. I think there is tremendous public good in free public education. I don't think there is much public good in free public entertainment.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The majority of the what we consider classics were the pulp fiction of their day. All of Shakespeare was written to be enjoyed by day laborers who couldn’t afford a seat. Jules Verne and Michael Crichton did the same thing, one just seems more like literature because it’s old. Some things where both written to be high brow and ended up being remembered but that has more to do with quality than their intended audience.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Libraries also have to get funding. If they don’t provide what their customers want, their customers won’t vote for the taxes they need to run. The people running these things aren’t stupid.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    This is some weird elitist bullshit. Do you know what belongs in libraries. Books, newspaper, interactive media, movies. The knowledge, writings, and creation of human culture. Humans are not machines. We need both knowledge and entertainment to survive and thrive. Publishers would lock up society and culture and charge you to use it. Fuck them.
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      It’s fine if you believe this, but this was not the reason the US public library system was created, and it seems wrong to me to have co-opted it and destroyed the original purpose in so doing without having a wider conscious public discussion.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        You seem to be making up your own history of public libraries in the US, and seeming to be ignoring their funding and purposes were multifaceted.
        Amezarak 4y ago
        I am citing the actual history of the US public library system, which ironically can probably now be found only with difficulty in actual public libraries. But Wikipedia has a decent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_Amer... As you can see, libraries in the US were founded to advance 'learning' and 'piety'. Here is the treatise of one of the biggest influencers and advocates for the creation of the public library system. https://ia600909.us.archive.org/10/items/intellectualtorc00torriala/intellectualtorc00torriala.pdf https://ia600909.us.archive.org/10/items/intellectualtorc00t... I strongly encourage reading all the citations in the Wikipedia article surrounding the creation of the library system. Sadly, many of them are paywalled and inaccessible via even the Archive project, Google Books [ed - to be clear if you think I am pro-publisher, you are wrong: the former two projects had more potential to do good than I can express], and likely your local library. But you can find enough to prove the point. There has been a massive shift in the mission of libraries in the past several decades, and the public didn't get a say.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > I don't see how libraries are to blame. Your ire should be directed at modern society On the contrary, libraries are there to facilitate the improvement of said "«modern society»".
haswell 4y ago
Some libraries perhaps, but what you describe is certainly not universal, and quite unlike the experience I’ve had with my city’s library system. A system where I can continue to explore ideas of philosophy, science and history. A system where I can explore new ideas through the community maker space they host. A system that allows me to recommend thought provoking books to friends, who in turn can explore the ideas regardless of their financial means. A system that helped me triangulate around some much needed knowledge at a pivotal time of change in my life. The place I vote. The place that hosts community events and classes aimed at improving the community. The picture you paint is a problematic one, for sure. The picture you paint is not universal or inevitable. I do worry that the belief that this is universal can only hasten the demise of the good parts that remain.
jrochkind1 4y ago
That hasn't been my experience. I recently checked out the 2018 David Constantine translation of The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, for instance. Do you have a particular library system, and some examples of books you have been unable to get? And can you say more about what you mean about libraries making money by destroying books? I've never heard of this, and am not finding much googling. But I see a lot of value in providing books that the public wants to read, I am confused by your statement that there's no worth in letting people check out John Grisham from the public library. And it's obviously not like John Grisham's income is being hurt either. For at least couple generations public libraries have seen it as included in their mission to provide the public with the recreational reading people actually want, so at any rate this thing you're complaining about isn't new. I agree libraries should also be able to provide more than just the most popular books. Which requires they get enough budget to so. Ironically, if they refused to offer books people actually wanted to read, but only offered books some kind of experts thought were to be recommended on, well, whatever grounds you are suggesting should gatekeep what goes in a library -- they would find it even harder to get budgets. People don't tend to support raising the budget of institutions that refuse to give them what they actually want. But the reason to provide popular books isn't just some kind of manipulation of the public -- it's part of the whole mission of public libraries, providing books people actually want to read. And of course, providing for recreational reading, this has been the mission of public libraries for a long time, nothing new about it.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Librarians deliberately keep book-destruction quiet, because they know the public would be outraged. Most people do not want to write about it because especially once you're "inside", you're the sort of person that holds librarians and librarians in extremely high regard. You have to be inside the system. Nevertheless, articles do come out every few years. https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-libraries-really-destroy-books https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-lib... EDIT: I cannot reply because I have posted too much but yes, if you read the link, it mentions they are paid for doing this.
  - ghaff 4y ago
Retric 4y ago
That’s wildly outside my experience. Libraries adapt to their local environment, the one closest to me has zero videos and few of the populist novels your talking about outside the “take it for free” table. But the thing is most libraries accept donations so it’s really cheap for them to just keep the kind of books you’re talking about. However, people rarely donate the classics so that tends to cost them actual money. So, a librarian who mostly sees people come in to use the public computers is likely going to prioritize their budget to maximize the number of public PC’s they can have. That’s going to mean spending less money stocking the classics and more filler.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Libraries aren't hurting for donations of classics, they are destroying the ones they already have. I've seen for myself what happens to donations of classics: they go to the book sale and then get pulped or trashed. https://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html https://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-anot... > Imagine holding a beautiful, dusty, illustrated volume of Shakespeare printed in the 1700s, a calligraphic message from its long-dead owner inscribed on the inside cover, and throwing it straight in the trash. I've been there, more than once. I could have kept it and maybe gotten a few hundred dollars for it on eBay, if my supervisor wasn't watching with specific orders to prevent me from doing that. And again I want to be clear that obviously we aren't hurting for copies of Shakespeare, even though this example is a little sad. It's more niche works that are being erased from human knowledge altogether.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Libraries have always curated their collections, someone is always going to disagree with what was trashed, but that’s what the library of congress is for not various independent institutions. So no this isn’t removing knowledge from human memory. That article is extremely slanted, but it’s hardly describing some new phenomena. Library shelf space isn’t free and people keep printing new books. Similarly libraries need to do renovations etc. With ~125,000 libraries in the US alone some will be vastly worse than average no matter what your criteria are. So if you expect all libraries to save thousands of old boy’s life magazine from the 50’s they are going to need to give something else up or you’re going to need to write a huge check with some stipulations. The same is true of books from the 1700’s, there wasn’t any particular value to the books that were trashed even if a few where more memorable.
matwood 4y ago
The focus on NYT best seller type stuff is relatively recent. Now, libraries spend large amounts of their budgets on those types of books.
jancsika 4y ago
A counter-take, also with zero citations: Libraries are in the set of institutions that tamp down on envy, which-- according to many psychologists-- is by far the most destructive emotional force in modern society. Libraries achieve this by a) offering an array of standard services, many of which are affordable (or even free!) to literally citizen, and b) not attempting to capitalize on offering premium or FOMO services for a bump in price. There's no equivalent of say, an American Express Black Card, at my public library. There is a single, unadorned laminated card offered to every patron, whether that patron is a an oil man or a fourth generation Appalachian hillbilly who just got running water[1]. Moreover, the kids of both the oil man and the hillbilly sit in the same story hour together (well, half hour-- they're kids after all) and get all excited about reading together. Moreover, those kids are all treated the same by librarians who, like Oprah, end by giving every single participant a prize. (You get a book! You get a book! You get a book!) But most importantly of all, the people who could not afford to buy the access to these books and programs can participate without feeling like a charity case. They are simply accessing a common resource delivered and paid for by people in the community who care about all the kids and adults who are patrons of the community library. That lowers the barrier to entry and makes it possible for more kids of various income levels to get a head start on reading at the ages when it's most impactful. It's like vectorization for reading enthusiasm. Finally, that hillbilly or oil man can go to any state in the union, walk in to a public library, and for a small fee get another laminated card that gets them the same access. It's like the McDonalds of American civics. I rankly speculate here in the bowels of HN that no one has ever envied another person for entering a public library. I also rankly speculate that if you take a young sibling/niece/nephew to your local library's story hour (ok, half hour), your rhetoric and perhaps even demeanor would soften in quite the same way as the Grinch listening watching people hold hands and sing. 1: Okay, perhaps a single clarifying citation here. I believe the family got running water back in the 80s. Edit: clarification, formatting
- Amezarak 4y ago
  Not only did I spend a lot of time in the library, and have been deeply involved in the library system, I have children of my own (which bizarrely is the only category of child you left out) I take there, and that is why I am keenly aware of the issue. It is better not to speculate about the people you are responding to.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
At least where I live, they're also a place to use the public 3D printers and laser cutters, a place for tutors to meet with students, or a place where you can be left alone and enjoy some peace and quiet. They're a cultural asset with and without the books.
GTP 4y ago
> In many library systems, the books that were the whole foundational reason for their existence have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries.) How is this a source of income?

JKCalhoun 4y ago

You seem to be blaming public libraries for giving the public what they want. I agree that public consumption has been trending anti-intellectual but I don't see how libraries are to blame. Your ire should be directed at modern society. Unfortunately that's a rather broad and manifold thing to dissect to determine where the problems lie.

Amezarak 4y ago
People have always loved pulp fiction. I love pulp fiction. Reading pulp fiction has always been popular. That doesn't mean it belongs in libraries. Librarians made a conscious decision to shift their focus into providing public entertainment rather than public education. We went from the libraries also providing our "pulp fiction" as an extra service(for lack of a better word) to practically only providing our pulp fiction, and focusing almost entirely on that. Even in terms of cultural trends, librarians have a shared responsibility to guide the public. And they did. These decisions are not made solely based on the least-checked-out books but also on ideological factors - what they think is good for the public. To my larger point, you cannot expect me to shed tears over publishers harming your ability to lend books because of your status as the sacred gatekeeper of public education when you've already abdicated that role. I think there is tremendous public good in free public education. I don't think there is much public good in free public entertainment.
- Retric 4y ago
  The majority of the what we consider classics were the pulp fiction of their day. All of Shakespeare was written to be enjoyed by day laborers who couldn’t afford a seat. Jules Verne and Michael Crichton did the same thing, one just seems more like literature because it’s old. Some things where both written to be high brow and ended up being remembered but that has more to do with quality than their intended audience.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Libraries also have to get funding. If they don’t provide what their customers want, their customers won’t vote for the taxes they need to run. The people running these things aren’t stupid.
- pixl97 4y ago
  This is some weird elitist bullshit. Do you know what belongs in libraries. Books, newspaper, interactive media, movies. The knowledge, writings, and creation of human culture. Humans are not machines. We need both knowledge and entertainment to survive and thrive. Publishers would lock up society and culture and charge you to use it. Fuck them.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    It’s fine if you believe this, but this was not the reason the US public library system was created, and it seems wrong to me to have co-opted it and destroyed the original purpose in so doing without having a wider conscious public discussion.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      You seem to be making up your own history of public libraries in the US, and seeming to be ignoring their funding and purposes were multifaceted.
      - Amezarak 4y ago
        I am citing the actual history of the US public library system, which ironically can probably now be found only with difficulty in actual public libraries. But Wikipedia has a decent overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_Amer... As you can see, libraries in the US were founded to advance 'learning' and 'piety'. Here is the treatise of one of the biggest influencers and advocates for the creation of the public library system. https://ia600909.us.archive.org/10/items/intellectualtorc00torriala/intellectualtorc00torriala.pdf https://ia600909.us.archive.org/10/items/intellectualtorc00t... I strongly encourage reading all the citations in the Wikipedia article surrounding the creation of the library system. Sadly, many of them are paywalled and inaccessible via even the Archive project, Google Books [ed - to be clear if you think I am pro-publisher, you are wrong: the former two projects had more potential to do good than I can express], and likely your local library. But you can find enough to prove the point. There has been a massive shift in the mission of libraries in the past several decades, and the public didn't get a say.
mdp2021 4y ago
> I don't see how libraries are to blame. Your ire should be directed at modern society On the contrary, libraries are there to facilitate the improvement of said "«modern society»".

haswell 4y ago

Some libraries perhaps, but what you describe is certainly not universal, and quite unlike the experience I’ve had with my city’s library system. A system where I can continue to explore ideas of philosophy, science and history. A system where I can explore new ideas through the community maker space they host. A system that allows me to recommend thought provoking books to friends, who in turn can explore the ideas regardless of their financial means. A system that helped me triangulate around some much needed knowledge at a pivotal time of change in my life. The place I vote. The place that hosts community events and classes aimed at improving the community. The picture you paint is a problematic one, for sure. The picture you paint is not universal or inevitable. I do worry that the belief that this is universal can only hasten the demise of the good parts that remain.

jrochkind1 4y ago

That hasn't been my experience. I recently checked out the 2018 David Constantine translation of The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, for instance. Do you have a particular library system, and some examples of books you have been unable to get? And can you say more about what you mean about libraries making money by destroying books? I've never heard of this, and am not finding much googling. But I see a lot of value in providing books that the public wants to read, I am confused by your statement that there's no worth in letting people check out John Grisham from the public library. And it's obviously not like John Grisham's income is being hurt either. For at least couple generations public libraries have seen it as included in their mission to provide the public with the recreational reading people actually want, so at any rate this thing you're complaining about isn't new. I agree libraries should also be able to provide more than just the most popular books. Which requires they get enough budget to so. Ironically, if they refused to offer books people actually wanted to read, but only offered books some kind of experts thought were to be recommended on, well, whatever grounds you are suggesting should gatekeep what goes in a library -- they would find it even harder to get budgets. People don't tend to support raising the budget of institutions that refuse to give them what they actually want. But the reason to provide popular books isn't just some kind of manipulation of the public -- it's part of the whole mission of public libraries, providing books people actually want to read. And of course, providing for recreational reading, this has been the mission of public libraries for a long time, nothing new about it.

Amezarak 4y ago
Librarians deliberately keep book-destruction quiet, because they know the public would be outraged. Most people do not want to write about it because especially once you're "inside", you're the sort of person that holds librarians and librarians in extremely high regard. You have to be inside the system. Nevertheless, articles do come out every few years. https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-libraries-really-destroy-books https://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141265066/hard-choices-do-lib... EDIT: I cannot reply because I have posted too much but yes, if you read the link, it mentions they are paid for doing this.
- ghaff 4y ago

Retric 4y ago

That’s wildly outside my experience. Libraries adapt to their local environment, the one closest to me has zero videos and few of the populist novels your talking about outside the “take it for free” table. But the thing is most libraries accept donations so it’s really cheap for them to just keep the kind of books you’re talking about. However, people rarely donate the classics so that tends to cost them actual money. So, a librarian who mostly sees people come in to use the public computers is likely going to prioritize their budget to maximize the number of public PC’s they can have. That’s going to mean spending less money stocking the classics and more filler.

Amezarak 4y ago
Libraries aren't hurting for donations of classics, they are destroying the ones they already have. I've seen for myself what happens to donations of classics: they go to the book sale and then get pulped or trashed. https://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html https://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-anot... > Imagine holding a beautiful, dusty, illustrated volume of Shakespeare printed in the 1700s, a calligraphic message from its long-dead owner inscribed on the inside cover, and throwing it straight in the trash. I've been there, more than once. I could have kept it and maybe gotten a few hundred dollars for it on eBay, if my supervisor wasn't watching with specific orders to prevent me from doing that. And again I want to be clear that obviously we aren't hurting for copies of Shakespeare, even though this example is a little sad. It's more niche works that are being erased from human knowledge altogether.
- Retric 4y ago
  Libraries have always curated their collections, someone is always going to disagree with what was trashed, but that’s what the library of congress is for not various independent institutions. So no this isn’t removing knowledge from human memory. That article is extremely slanted, but it’s hardly describing some new phenomena. Library shelf space isn’t free and people keep printing new books. Similarly libraries need to do renovations etc. With ~125,000 libraries in the US alone some will be vastly worse than average no matter what your criteria are. So if you expect all libraries to save thousands of old boy’s life magazine from the 50’s they are going to need to give something else up or you’re going to need to write a huge check with some stipulations. The same is true of books from the 1700’s, there wasn’t any particular value to the books that were trashed even if a few where more memorable.

matwood 4y ago

The focus on NYT best seller type stuff is relatively recent. Now, libraries spend large amounts of their budgets on those types of books.

jancsika 4y ago

A counter-take, also with zero citations: Libraries are in the set of institutions that tamp down on envy, which-- according to many psychologists-- is by far the most destructive emotional force in modern society. Libraries achieve this by a) offering an array of standard services, many of which are affordable (or even free!) to literally citizen, and b) not attempting to capitalize on offering premium or FOMO services for a bump in price. There's no equivalent of say, an American Express Black Card, at my public library. There is a single, unadorned laminated card offered to every patron, whether that patron is a an oil man or a fourth generation Appalachian hillbilly who just got running water[1]. Moreover, the kids of both the oil man and the hillbilly sit in the same story hour together (well, half hour-- they're kids after all) and get all excited about reading together. Moreover, those kids are all treated the same by librarians who, like Oprah, end by giving every single participant a prize. (You get a book! You get a book! You get a book!) But most importantly of all, the people who could not afford to buy the access to these books and programs can participate without feeling like a charity case. They are simply accessing a common resource delivered and paid for by people in the community who care about all the kids and adults who are patrons of the community library. That lowers the barrier to entry and makes it possible for more kids of various income levels to get a head start on reading at the ages when it's most impactful. It's like vectorization for reading enthusiasm. Finally, that hillbilly or oil man can go to any state in the union, walk in to a public library, and for a small fee get another laminated card that gets them the same access. It's like the McDonalds of American civics. I rankly speculate here in the bowels of HN that no one has ever envied another person for entering a public library. I also rankly speculate that if you take a young sibling/niece/nephew to your local library's story hour (ok, half hour), your rhetoric and perhaps even demeanor would soften in quite the same way as the Grinch listening watching people hold hands and sing. 1: Okay, perhaps a single clarifying citation here. I believe the family got running water back in the 80s. Edit: clarification, formatting

Amezarak 4y ago
Not only did I spend a lot of time in the library, and have been deeply involved in the library system, I have children of my own (which bizarrely is the only category of child you left out) I take there, and that is why I am keenly aware of the issue. It is better not to speculate about the people you are responding to.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

At least where I live, they're also a place to use the public 3D printers and laser cutters, a place for tutors to meet with students, or a place where you can be left alone and enjoy some peace and quiet. They're a cultural asset with and without the books.

GTP 4y ago

> In many library systems, the books that were the whole foundational reason for their existence have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries.) How is this a source of income?