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Comment by jawns | Hacker News Reader

Can I just say how much I love the way public libraries have navigated themselves into the digital age?

They are, as this piece points out, very popular places to access computers and the Internet, and many libraries offer a wealth of digital content. I can check out and instantly download e-books and audiobooks and movies from my library.

It's certainly conceivable that they might have transitioned less well. There is, after all, a healthy amount of government bureaucracy in the public library system, and that tends to stymie innovation. And then there's just the pain of transition. Bookstores have felt those pains hard; it's not that people don't want content, but they want content in different forms, and a lot of bookstores just couldn't move fast enough.

But I'm really glad to see libraries continue to be generally healthy, and important community resources.

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Replying from the NY Public Library in Nolita. Couldn't agree more, the crowd here is a real melting pot. Students, kids, old folk, rich, poor.

I also like the opportunity to get on with work in a quiet place without feeling obliged to buy a coffee.

Jersey St? I love that street. Very picturesque. So many photo shoots and movies filmed there (like the intro to Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation).

The front in 1980 https://youtu.be/eAc59a90PBc?t=157

In New York you have access to lynda.com, just need a library card and pin. https://www.lynda.com/portal/patron

Public libraries are amazingly accessible, but university libraries remain complicit in the ongoing racket of pay-to-read academic literature. Although many university libraries allow guest access during the day, you cannot access their academic subscriptions unless you're on the secure wifi.

Most universities have a proxy service that allows you to access journals and other digital databases from anywhere in the world.

My previous university has one that I have lifetime access to (UAE University) and my current university has an even better collection (GATech).

They have to be, as a condition of their journal subscriptions. Librarians generally want to extend access as far as possible, but they are terrified of pissing off a publisher and getting a journal taken away from their entire university's community of researchers who need it to do their work.

If the universities really cared about open access, they could unionize against the publishers. Imagine the top 20 schools, which also happen to be the ones producing the research, refused to abide by the publisher rules. Would they all have their access revoked?

It's never made sense to me why, despite billions of dollars budgeted toward scientific funding, private companies make money charging for journal access. Why can't all that public funding also go toward funding the peer review, editing, and publishing?

> If the universities really cared about open access, they could unionize against the publishers.

If universities really, really cared, they could band together and set up their own journal publishing organization (many universities do have their own academic publishing arms, but a single-university journal publisher probably would be harder to establish respect for than one sponsored by a broad coalition of major universities.)

It's not enough to set up new journals. Until you convince everyone who matters (in your area of research) to use only the new journals, you still need the subscriptions to all the old journals as well, until (if!) they are abandoned and lose all status.

Aaron Swartz alredy wrote about that in his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto; https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...):

"There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought

valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure

their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But

even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.

Everything up until now will have been lost."

I am surprised piracy has not solved this problem.

"really cared about open access" doesn't mean caring about it above everything else, especially above their primary mission of doing research, which requires ability to publish in every particular research niche community globally (for every research area, the "top 20 schools" are different 20 schools, with only minor overlap), and the ability to read all this communication. Boycotts have been discussed and haven't succeeded because they directly harm researcher short-term interests; a slow migration is in process with some research communities switching to e.g. arxiv or other open access resources, but until all or most research areas worldwide have done so, every university still needs these subscriptions. Open access is desired, but having the subscriptions (and taking part of the publications) is mandatory.

> Would they all have their access revoked?

Yes, I imagine they would. They would also probably be taken to court for breach of contract, and the courts would fine them a substantial amount. I would certainly hope that this would be the case - even the top 20 universities have to obey the law, and producing research has never been a valid excuse for choosing to ignore a law you don't like.

Criminal activity is not the answer here - nor should it ever be.

What the universities can do, if they cared, is re-negotiate their contracts with the publishing houses. Of course, this requires assigning a monetary value to the amount they care, which must be greater that the inevitable price increase they woulld incur for the change in access restrictions.

This doesn't have to be the case: the libraries of public German universities are often called "University and State Library" and are open to anyone living in the state.

There are plenty of public-access university libraries. What they're restricted from doing is extending journal access to users who are neither attached to the university or physically present in the library.

In Finland many public libraries nowadays have even 3D printers and film slide scanners, and arrange training sessions for their use. It's really a wonderful system, and probably not even that expensive considering the learning potential for even the disadvantaged citizens.

This is even popular in the Southeastern US, which is pretty incredible.

Plus having a library card often gets you access (even remote access!) to lots of expensive services - I use the OED, J-stor, etc. from home with gusto. I will say there's a small dark side to having gone digital, many libraries have culled a lot of their holdings, and/or can't afford to buy as many books as they once did (have to pay for those licenses somehow...). It's likely that there's less demand, but it still makes me a little sad.

I haven't noticed any reduction in catalog size or variety over the years (US), maybe I've lived around well-funded systems? If anything it's become more varied with time. The only annoying thing is having to filter out eBooks every time searching the catalog.

RE: culling, Yeah, there is stuff (I notice manga not reprinted since the 90s, they didn't hold up physically that well and they loaned mainly to teens) that I remember being common that has been culled.

e.g. My library system doesn't have a copy of any of the volumes of "Please Save My Earth," and that was a title that many libraries had if they had any manga at all, in my experience.

Yes, I discovered this myself far later than I should have!

The SF central branch has a really good selection of programming/tech books. Also, having a library card enables access (as you note) to a wide selection of ebooks[1].

(I note, however, that the interface that you can use them through could use some redesign.)

[1] http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000005001

More importantly, bookstores have to turn a profit.

Libraries don't.

Your average bookstore makes like 5% profit (if they're not losing money). Barnes and Noble could become a non-profit tomorrow and prices would go down so little you wouldn't notice. It's not profit versus non-profit that means the difference between "affordable" and "unaffordable." It's the ability to use tax dollars to offer a service for a fraction of what it costs.

>Bookstores have felt those pains hard; it's not that people don't want content, but they want content in different forms, and a lot of bookstores just couldn't move fast enough.

I'd say rather than people preferring digital, its the browsing and buying experience of the same old printed matter that needs to change for them to stay competitive. Bookstores have until now been little more than warehouses that store books, and let people walk in and buy them. That same function is done better by Amazon.

What an updated bookstore needs to be about is the experience: Curation and recommendations so that you can find books that you didn't know you'd love (this is invaluable), a nice environment that makes you want to go there and makes books feel exciting. It should also hold events - launches, readings, discussions, exhibitions, workshops. It has to be more than a warehouse, basically.

This encompasses retail for all industries: Experience, service, novelty.

While it's not just a bookstore, I think Fnac is a good example of this: many stores have a kind of coffeeshop inside where you can read the books (for free) and where they regularly host small concerts and discussions with book and movie authors.

> Experience, service, novelty.

And a price close enough to that found online that you can get the close. Or you're going to get showroomed.

An alternative to having the price close enough is to have the price in the ballpark and have a sense of urgency such that the consumer will buy now. I have walked into Barnes and Noble and bought a book because I wanted it right then and I was out and about. Perhaps I could have had it for $5 cheaper on Amazon, but saving that $5 wasn't worth the wait.

Another alternative is to have (at least some of )the physical experience be purchased--hence the coffee shops in the bookstore--you can't get hot coffee via Amazon. (Yet?)

the shocking truth is that the government red tape proved to be less detrimental to knowledge sharing than DRM.

Can I just say how much more civil the comments are here on HN re: libraries as opposed to, say, the last article I read on reddit[0] re: the subject. Seems the only thing they could do is complain about the homeless.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4txauf/internet_cant...

Are you suggesting that it's not a legitimate grievance? Unless people are lying about, for instance, people watching porn in libraries, it does seem like there's a problem with the civility of that discussion. I haven't seen anything like that in my area, but I have seen lines of 16 or so desks being used as arcades, which can be okay so long as people remain quiet. But I've seen people have to ask gamers to leave in order to do something presumably more in-line with the goals of the library, which many people, especially kids, will be too shy to do.

In theory, public libraries have been meant for people from all walks of life since their inception. But computer media have made them useful for a lot more things than intellectual pursuits, and it does seem reasonable that this would concern people. It's their taxes paying for it after all.

It would be nice if people on reddit would reflect on why it bothers them that people come to the library on drugs and watch porn, but reddit doesn't have a culture of people writing out three-paragraph justifications for their opinions. I thought that it was pretty clear, though, what people are actually bothered by from the comments you uncharitably labeled "complaining about the homeless".

They said it was civil. The subject shouldn't be talked about because it could offend someone, not that it wasn't legitimate.

I have web access at my cities public library, but that's it. They have a fiber connection, wifi, and lots of working space but you can't even access github, Dropbox, or most vps's

> Can I just say how much I love the way public libraries have navigated themselves into the digital age?

Yes, but at the slight risk of sounding ridiculous. Libraries were computerized long before the "Internet age".

He said "digital age" not "Internet age" and then he mentions access to computers, the Internet, e-books, etc. Were you just looking for a comment to criticize?

> and then he mentions access to computers, the Internet, e-books, etc

From that, I inferred that "digital age" is being used to denote "Internet age".

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