How the N.Y. Public Library Fills Its Shelves | Hacker News Reader

How the N.Y. Public Library Fills Its Shelves

nytimes.com

I am surprised that the library has 1 million cardholders. I don't know how much a subscription costs but in the Netherlands that would translate into roughly 30-40 million euro in revenue per year. That's a huge amount for a library.

It's free. In most (probably all, but I don't want to make that claim) areas of the U.S., people are entitled to use the local public library system operated by the county they pay taxes in.

You simply walk in, say "I would like a library card" and show some ID with your name and address on it and that's it.

Many public library systems in the U.S. have an incredible list of books and services they offer their communities. The ones in the counties near me offer everything from computer classes to maker areas with free 3d printers and other equipment and usually offer many on-line services like ebooks, audiobooks, etc. As a result, they are heavily used and enjoyed. They're highly responsive to children and young users with huge dedicated sections of child and young adult literature and a few even have robust comic book and manga collections!

Even the rural system I grew up using, which had very tiny libraries, were network connected back in the late 80s and you could "order" books or items from anywhere in the system and have it show up in a day. Most central county libraries also contain many historic records going back hundreds of years -- land records, old newspapers, important legal documents, etc. You can't usually take them from the library, but anybody can view them. If anybody wants a legal way to watch movies or listen to music without buying them and for free, just go check out the massive music and movie section at your local library.

The National Library (the Library of Congress) is free, and the most impressive active collection of material I've ever encountered anywhere. It includes everything from 500 year old violins and original composer folios to Graphic Novels.

There are also private (paid) libraries that house special focused collections. Usually certain research libraries for law or medicine. But I've also seen some foreign language private libraries for certain communities when the local system doesn't offer enough in their home language.

I'm actually curious, what other countries have similar systems, and what's the library system like in your home country? The other country I'm the most familiar with has good libraries, but their almost entirely private and usually dedicated to one or two major topic areas. Bookstores seem to fill in the rest.

One of the American marvels is their library system. I've been to NYPL libraries, they are awesome, especially the bigger ones. The public libraries in smaller towns aren't that good (their book collections could be small/uninteresting), but they are still hubs for various activities - movies, free classes, kids stuff etc.

Even the small libraries are great because of intra-library lending. There's a robust network of libraries across the nation that lets you get almost any book you'd like. In most states the public university system is also part of the lending network and any library in the state can get books from there.

I belong to a library system with two branches, that are relatively large and well funded, but I can also walk into a branch in several other town libraries and get a card due to library agreements.

I can also get a special card good at any library in my state, for a fee.

My parents live in an area that isn't serviced by a local library, but can buy into a nearby library. Although no library is usually indicative of an area that isn't worth living in and doesn't fund schools well, IMHO.

I heartily agree - with one caveat, it's generally not possible to make an ILL request for a title published in the current calendar year (even if you're making a request in December for a book published in January - though at least you only have to wait a month). I think this is to give the patrons of the library which holds a book the first chance to read it, but it's a crude implement.

A small nitpick, the Library of Congress is very much not the National Library. The service it provides the public is ancillary to its role as the library for Congress. This creates headaches for librarians, including those working for the LoC.

Free in Australia too. When I was a kid you could order books from the library and they'd be put on the train for you -- you could pick them up / return them at the station (if you lived in the country I mean)

Andrew Carnegie was a huge supporter of public libraries and endowed over 2500 public libraries world wide with most of them in the United States, Canada, and his native Scotland around the turn of the 20th century. Part of the requirements to receive an endowment was that the operations needed to be paid with public funding and that the library would be free to use for everyone.

These Carnegie libraries are basically the model of the modern public library. They were some (maybe the first?) of the public libraries that had open stacks. A lot of the original libraries are still in use or have been expanded. Most of the buildings that were once libraries are now open museums or other buildings that are cultural and art centers open to the public.

It helps that he had specific architectural requirements for the buildings that made them rather grand. My local art gallery in Canada is the old Carnegie library, and even though its on the side of a steep hill, the front entry at the top of the hill still has a marble staircase up to the doors. I think it was something about making the buildings imposing, if I remember right.

This is the first time I heard that you have to pay a fee to get a library card in Europe. Honestly, I didn't believe you but it turns out to be true, e.g. for the Berlin Staatsbibliotek you have to pay 15 Euros for a year (https://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/service/registration/, students pay half). I'm amazed that this is the case. There is no way that libraries, esp. in small towns can live by card fees alone, so they must be still getting some tax dollars. What's the benefit not making it 100% tax dollar based?

I looked up the library from a big city (Utrecht), it has the following costs:

- Free up to 17 years old (unlimited everything, 1 hour of computer time)

- 21 euro per year for a limited digital subscription (6 e-books and unlimited audio books)

- 25 euro per year for 18 to 25 year olds (unlimited items, 6 e-books, 4 hours of computer time)

- 34 euro for a limited subscription (20 items, 6 e-books, reservation costs 1 euro, 1 hour of computer time)

- 42 euro for a digital subscription (unlimited e-books and unlimited audio books)

- 45 euro for low-income (unlimited items, unlimited e-books, 4 hours of computer time)

- 56 euro per year for everyone else (unlimited items, unlimited e-books, 4 hours of computer time)

The computer time is per day. After your free computer time it is 25 cents per 15 minutes.

My local library system also derives revenue from penal fines[0]; so as long as you're found guilty and fined for a non-civil offense[1], you're supporting your local library. So wait until the end of this month before you go fly your drone(754.45a), eh?

[0]https://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(hybsfl334aadodafyfwnru2h))... [1]http://legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-chap750.pdf

In Germany: Pretty much every municipal library charges a fee.

University libraries generally don't, but even the state library I used to patronize introduced a fee ten years ago.

I'm quite surprised to learn this. It's not (yet?) that way in the UK.

Its a statutory service in the UK I seem to recall

Public libraries in the United States are free.

They are generally supported by local taxes, sometimes with added support from benefactors, fundraising events, or some optional paid services.

The New York Public Libarary has an annual budget of over $300,000,000...and is one of three library systems in New York City!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Public_Library

One of the most common socialist institutions in the USA is the "public" library. Patronized mostly by the intelligentsia, it's just a matter of time until the tiki torches and pitchforks come out and public book burnings become common.

In the future, all your books will be owned by the publishers and you will only be allowed to read their content on a subscription basis at library365 by downloading the tracking app onto your reader device.

Socialism, at its core, is the governmental control (through extensive regulation of outright ownership) of the means of production of goods.

A public library does not fit that description (or any other regularly used definitions of socialism.)

At first the numbers shocked me (500k books, 16 reviewers) because they entail something like ~100 books added per reviewer per day (~250 workdays/year, 2k books per workday).

Then I saw the numbers of copies ordered for the top 10 titles and realized that they're adding many books with the same title and potentially in the range of ~10 copies per title on average -- so that seems much less strange, reviewers only need to approve about 10 titles per day or so.

So then the question is, how much they have to comb through to get there. The article only gives one data point here:

> Politics and dieting regimens — keto, Paleo and vegan — get a close look from Wayne Roylance, 58, a selector who reviews more than 4,000 adult titles a month. Of those, he typically picks about 1,500 for the shelves.

Actually that one made me burst out laughing at work. (Since they weren't talking about "titles" before, my reading initially placed the end of that first sentence as a commentary on the magnitude of Wayne's porn addiction, rather than a material fact to be considered.)

That number doesn't quite square up... ~20 weekdays per month means he's reviewing 200 per day, which is doable but a bit much (sort of a Marie Kondo thing, processing one item a minute by holding it up for 30 seconds and keeping it if it "sparks joy", is 480/day-ish), but I am very surprised that he picks 75 per day rather than the earlier estimate of ~10. Maybe I was wrong and indeed most of their books are singular rather than duplicates of one title?

Title selection is heavily automated / outsourced. Selectors have lists from publishers and the library community to work off of so whatever the actual number is, it definitely follows the 80:20 rule. Most of the 1500 Wayne picks, he won't even think about.

I've often wondered why so many libraries tend to have odd/obscure works by famous authors, but not the books that they're actually famous for. (Clarification: I mean the famous books aren't even in the collection, not that they're merely checked out by someone else.)

Also, this is a not a comment on the NYPL, which I've been to only a handful of times a long time ago, but I've been really disappointed by too many books in too many libraries being really trashy and in poor taste. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the library just catering to the lowest common denominator, the book collection reflecting the community's donations, or of the book selectors themselves being poorly educated and having trashy tastes, but it really makes me scratch my head sometimes.

University libraries and private libraries tend to be much better in this regard, with public libraries being typically way worse.

The famous books probably get rented more quickly.

They say in this article that public interest largely drives what the library buys. Even if you consider a book "trashy", it still may be very popular and culturally relevant.

This.

You wont find the real popular books on the shelves. It's not unheard of having books that are never shelved in their lifetime. As they are reserved even before they are purchased and continually reserved by other patrons. Until they are weeded due to wear.

That was the case for Terry Prattchet at my local UK Library.

Rented more quickly and never returned.

Source: I work in a library.

Don’t you give out fines for late returns (or theft)

Yes and letters are sent out informing the person. Sometimes they claimed they returned them, which is only true in a very tiny minority of cases. (Every library checks the claim list every month.) Fines stop at the cost of the item, so the worst they'll have to ever suffer is paying for the items. Every so often, there's a fine forgiveness program and everything is just written off.

There must be more discrimination than that. Then wouldn't the library be full of porn and romance novels? The two largest volume of new publications per year.

Libraries are full of romance novels. If you’ve ever stood in line to check out a book you may have noticed how popular they are. I’m glad that people are reading, and don’t see a reason to pass judgement on the people reading them or pretend that libraries should be filled with the literary equivalent of broccoli.

Hey man, broccoli is delicious.

By "largest volume", do you mean number of distinct titles published, or number of copies sold? I think it's the former, which wouldn't translate into customer/patron demand.

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