Have you been to the library lately?
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
> A library is one of the last truly public spaces, where you can go to get out of the elements or meet with people without the expectation of buying something.
[0] https://www.afscme.org/blog/camden-county-library-workers-ra...
Public parks of course need some staff, but maybe they would be better if they didn't have them: the two gardeners for my local public park have been nicknamed 'Rack' and 'Ruin' due to their extreme approach to dead-heading..!
[0] https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2022/reimagining-the-t...
What places used to exist that no longer do where you can exist without the expectation of buying something?
Thinking about it, libraries are unusual in that they have no cost at all to enter. Top of my head only religious buildings seem to be similar in that regards.
There's quite a lot of options as far as no expectations to buy anything, but you need to pay some kind of fee - sport's centres, clubs that sort of thing. (One might argue they often contain a shop/cafe, but I'd argue you don't go there to use those, and they are very optional)
They don't necessarily want to be in charge of providing other needs for the homeless. But their question is: where else are those homeless supposed to go? The library is the most visible public-facing aspect of the government. If they can leverage that to bring services to people, that's a good start.
The solution is not to ban the homeless from the libraries. The solution is to bring the rest of homeless services and support to the place where the homeless are.
It isn't reasonable that we expect librarians to do this kind of work, and I would argue that there are elements of doing so that are outright illegal.
It's one reason why I won't work in public libraries as someone with an MLIS.
Given all of this, these librarians aren't being tricked by anyone. It's just one more moral, virtuous thing to do for the community, despite not having the training or support to handle anything but the easy cases.
No, it is not. The solution is to reduce homelessness, drug addicts and poverty. If needed create actual spaces for homeless people to go to, where there are actually people/resources which can help them.
Turning libraries into homeless shelters and librarians into social workers is an absurd policy idea.
The most unforgivably absurd policy idea is when the Seattle public schools got rid of calculus classes because of "equity".
They did get rid of various gifted/talented programs in middle school, with the goal of getting the majority of students to the same level of math, because the placement tests for the gifted/talented/honors math courses in middle schools correlated much closer to family income than actual math aptitude. (I took one of these tests in elementary school and failed, despite placing in math Olympiad the same year. They were mostly about folding pieces of paper.)
I don't know how one could get data on this, because how does one measure math aptitude without a test?
What other tests? If those tests are better, why not use them?
> and grades
Grades are quite unreliable, as they are too easily manipulated (like grade inflation). For example, my high school physics teacher proclaimed that everyone in his classes should get As. He did that a little too loudly, and the administration had to ask him not to do that. Instead, during tests, he'd offer to help anyone answer the questions if they had any difficulty. He was a nice fellow, I liked him, but the grades he handed out weren't worth spit.
That an aptitude test correlated with family income isn’t weird, kids with well to do parents generally get more instruction, resources, and pressure to do well on these tests. All of that is useful in developing actual aptitude, although it is still very unfair.
Before discovering this hidden marvel, which is actually a huge building, I never liked the loudness of working in a cafe until one day when it hit me, why not try the library. Haven't looked back since.
But I still go to the library almost every weekend.
It's really depressing that the skills I have that are worth the most are those I learned as a child, but it is what it is.
That has certainly dissuaded me from going regularly.
Late last year we even had to shut down our library for multiple weeks, because methamphetamine was detected during testing, because people were smoking it in the library.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/us/boulder-colorado-meth-...
It's closed on the weekends, and during the week it's 9:30 to 5 PM, with the exception of 11:30 to 7 PM on Wednesdays.
My library literally doesn't have funding and the city nor its taxpayers care enough to help.
This is worth remembering.
The more functioning homeless put enough scratch together to get a place at a flophouse.
I think it's also policing. There was a time that a bum who got caught in the wrong place got the crap kicked out of them by the cops. Obviously problematic for so many reasons but violence does have its way of modifying behavior.
Also drugs. Just way easier to get and more powerful than before. Back then it was mostly alcohol. While that takes a terrible toll on one's body most alcoholics are functional to a reasonable extent. Not so much for crack or heroin or meth addicts.
Second, more crazies were institutionalized. Santa Clara County used to have "The Great Asylum for the Insane.", opened in 1885. This was a huge complex of buildings in a rural setting. The place was later renamed to Agnews State Mental Hospital, later Agnews Developmental Center.[2] Beginning in 1972 this was gradually shut down. The last patient was kicked out in 1998. The remaining buildings are now owned by Oracle, and you can go look at some of them if you want.
Third, vagrancy used to be be illegal. Cops arrested people for it, and they were sorted out into "too lazy to work", "unable to work", or "crazy". This peaked during the Great Depression, when the Works Progress Administration was created to give unemployed people jobs.[3] At peak, the Federal government employed 3 million people, mostly doing construction work. There was some really nice construction. Rincon Annex, the old post office in San Francisco, is one of the finer local examples.
As the demand for unskilled labor declined, finding some place to send the "too lazy to work" people became difficult.
Fourth, drugs. There are too many burned-out people who aren't coming back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnews_Developmental_Center
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
The modern world is terrifying and confusing, but every so often some small nugget of information comes along that makes profound sense.
https://www.thoughtco.com/hoovervilles-homeless-camps-of-the...
Kids growing up on the streets used to be extremely common.
Purely a coincidence that was the same era Reagan was president.
My library looks nothing like this. You're painting all libraries with a broad brush, generalizing from a very small number of libraries in the downtown core of a handful of cities.
But yeah. Our view of homelessness as a personal failure of the homeless person, rather than a societal failure to care for its people, is not working. More punishment and less services only exacerbates the problem.
I am not making this up.
> The bulk of money raised from the new levy, $707 million, would go toward the construction of new subsidized rental homes and improvements to aging affordable apartments. Those programs are focused on housing for people making 60% of area median income or less, about $74,000 a year for a family of three. Nearly two-thirds of the funding would fund housing for those making even less, 30% of area median income or $37,000 for a family of three.
The current levy (passed in 2016) is 25 cents per $1000. A tax of a few hundred dollars per year on a million dollar home isn't making an impact on housing affordability. Expanding the availability of affordable housing might. I'm skeptical that $707M is enough to make a dent.
If you'd rather criminalize homelessness, build prisons and courts, employ more cops and prosecutors and prison guards, and defense lawyers for the inevitable lawsuits that arise from inhumane treatment, you might want to work up a budget for all that. And tell me where the money is going to come from, in a state with no income tax.
The levy is an order of magnitude too small to fix problem. King County has 40,000 homeless. Also, I don't think the levy is for chronic homeless since it doesn't have programs to help them. The problem may be too big for local government and needs federal government to help out.
If interest rates go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go up, house prices go down.
In the long term, it's a net wash. That and the people on the boundary of homelessness are renters, not homeowners. Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property.
If landlords cannot make a reasonable rate of return, they will not enter the market, and existing ones will exit. This will reduce the supply, and then the rents will rise.
... Or do you think they will let them out for whatever they can get?
Houses aren't a soccer ball, you can't pack them up and leave if you don't like the playing field.
It's weird how whenever houses are the topic of discussion, people seem to think that economics should only work in one direction.
Additionally, no new housing will be built.
Ah, so because expenses temporarily exceed revenue on your million-dollar investment, you'll just let it rot down to zero?
What happened in Detroit was a collapse in demand of housing, caused by a collapse in employment. That collapse and reduction in the tax base lead to a death spiral, as a city's infrastructure costs are fixed - which pushed further marginal demand out.
You know what didn't happen in Detroit? A housing collapse because of a 20-cent-per-thousand-dollar property tax levy.
No town can survive a collapse in employment. The coastal cities with 11 job openings for 10 people who are fighting over 9 apartments aren't suffering from that problem, and it's ridiculous to point at Detroit as a comparison.
And if you think a 3% tax increase for landlords is 'massive', how would you describe the 20-40% increase in rents? If the poor landlords shouldn't be subjected to such a horrific thing, shouldn't the tenants be protected from ballooning rents?
If only the city could step in and ensure that new housing would be built. Oh wait, that's the purpose of the housing levy.
Or they are the cities with the worst housing affordability problems.
Or they are just the cities that have these public services. Not a lot of people complaining about homeless people riding the subway in rural Texas, because rural Texas doesn't have a subway.
----
Seattle, by the way, got a 'prosecute everything and restart the war on drugs' city attourney and a 'sweep the homeless away' mayor.
Strangely enough, neither policy has done shit to resolve any of the problems. Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone...
It took the state legislature to fix the city's problem (by banning SFH zoning, and hitting NIMBYs over the head with a stick), and maaaaybe we'll see the fruits of that policy ripen in a decade or two.
> Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone
Yes, everyone is better off when parks are drug vagrant free and possible to be enjoyed by everyone — even if that policy doesn’t solve every problem.
Toxic empathy is saying you should destroy society and afflict everyone with suffering because you haven’t yet created Utopia — and I think the responses to me show why excluding other voices under the guise of “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” failed in cities like Seattle.
You need both law and order and compassion for society to flourish. The only part we agree on is that cleaning up the mess is a decade scale challenge — especially now that toxic empathy has taken Seattle down the wrong path for the past decade.
If you're going to make fun of people like this, you shouldn't expect thoughtful responses.
When I lived there, I didn't know many other software folks who used the public library system at all. Not because of smelly homeless people. It was just more convenient for them to buy anything they wanted to read/watch/listen to.
And there were lots of convenient branch libraries for kids - better than trekking to the terrarium downtown anyway.
i think GP is talking about big cities. My library ( heart of chicago) is def fits the description.
streetview : https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x880e2d00ee6fbd09:0x...
This is outside my libary from st view: https://imgur.com/a/CE51r2v
There is usually a huge congregation of homeless there by afternoon. And its even worse inside the library. You get hit with stench as soon as you open the library door. Sucks because libarians have exceptional knowledge that any book lover would enjoy talking to.
> You're describing a local problem.
Unless you are suggesting middle class can only exist in the burbs and small towns.
I 've lived in pilsen chicago for over 25 yrs, this is my home. Hate to relocate in next few yrs because now i have newborn.
Now, ten or twenty years ago, the main branch downtown was in what certain conservative commentators might have called a "no-go zone"—but really the neighborhood around the library was fine. It seemed to me that the drug gangs in the area back then had some kind of unspoken agreement that the library was neutral (dare I say sacred?) ground.
you know there are actual no go zones like austin area in chicago. Why are you hiding behind 'conservative commentators' as a cover for your statement.
I do not live in Chicago and have said nothing here about it.
maybe your definition is different.
From last few weeks,
> Man, 38, shot in the face in Austin. > The 38-year-old was walking on the sidewalk when someone started shooting around 10:20 p.m. in the 4900 block of West Hubbard Street, according to police.
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/man-38-shot-in-the-face-in...
> 7 Shot, 1 Fatally, in Austin as Group Gathered to Honor Life of Man Killed in Car Accident
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/7-shot-1-fatally-in-au...
> Boy, 15, injured after shooting in Austin overnight
https://wgntv.com/news/chicagocrime/boy-15-injured-after-sho...
> Austin Neighbors Are Helping Each Other Get Mental Health Care After Shootings Near Preschool
> Some kids said they were too scared to play outside after hearing gunfire, a preschool leader said. A 20-year-old woman was killed and two men were wounded in two shootings days apart.
https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/04/27/austin-neighbors-are...
> Devout 'God-fearing' woman killed by stray bullet in front of Austin home, blocks away from church
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-crime-woman-killed-...
Once again: one of the wealthiest suburbs in Chicago is directly adjacent to Austin. I live in that suburb, across a street (that street would be Austin) from the neighborhood. People in Oak Park commute, on bicycles, through Austin. Notably, in the ~20 years I've lived here, I haven't heard a single story about any of those people being shot. Austin residents patronize our businesses. Much of Austin is middle class.
Austin is a troubled neighborhood (it is literally ground zero for US housing segregation), but it is absolutely not a "no-go zone". Words mean things. Ironically, people who "go" to Austin are probably much safer (essentially they _are_ safe there) than young male Black residents, who are the exclusive targets of the gang violence that occurs there.
You get the same weird arguments about the neighborhoods immediately surrounding Hyde Park on the south side, and the same rebuttals apply.
> I don't know if you live in Chicagoland or not
I've lived in pilsen for last 25 years and grew up here. I don't live in the burbs. I know what 'no go zones' mean, the block i grew up on in west pilsen used to be one ( but not anymore) . I now live on the edge of 'no go zone' in pilsen ( east of western ) . My wife works for charter school in englewood where i do weekly drop off and pickup. Englewood is a 'no go' zone for us, meaning we won't go there if we have no business being there, we never make a stop in that neighborhood ( like the cyclists you mention) .
you choose live white majority suburb with double the median income but not in austin. That revealed preference proves that Austin was a 'no go' zone for you? Going to coffeshop once in a while doesn't really count, imo.
> is absolutely not a "no-go zone". Words mean things.
You said austin is not a no go zone, can you give me an example of an area considered no go zone. Perhaps that will clarify.
> Notably, in the ~20 years I've lived here, I haven't heard a single story about any of those people being shot.
I just gave you two examples from last 2 months of ppl getting shot by stray bullets. What does you personally hearing about cyclists have to do with anything? This type of statement is really hard to respond to.
But even if we hadn't, and we'd simply chosen Oak Park over Austin, that wouldn't be a "revealing" preference. Austin is troubled and disinvested, again by dint of being the literal ground zero for post-redlining US housing segregation. At the beginning of the 1970s Austin was majority white; by the end it was over 90% Black, because of panic selling and white flight. There aren't that many restaurants, few grocery stores, &c, all as a result (if you're a middle class family in Austin, chances are you shop in Oak Park).
I think Austin is pretty neat; wide tree-lined blocks with some great, big houses. But I'm not arguing that it's unproblematic. It certainly is.
As for the definition of "no-go zone", Wikipedia's will suffice. Austin compares with literally none of the many examples given. You can go to Austin; you will be just fine.
Incidentally: people in Chicago have generally the same feelings about Auburn and Grand Crossing as they do about Englewood, but people still go to Lem's. It's true: I have no reason to go to Englewood. I also know less about it than I know about Austin. But Austin is simply not a no-go zone.
Cabrini Green, by the way? Never a no-go zone. I went to high school across the street from the old ABLA high-rises. Housing projects do not equate to "no-go zones".
Woman, 40, hit by stray bullet while driving in Austin ( https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/2/7/18389033/woman-40-hit-... )
13-year-old boy hit by stray bullet in South Austin, hospitalized (https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/13-year-old-boy-critically...)
pretty sure this stuff never happened in oak park where you live for safety of your family.
'Its not no a go zone , its a problematic area' is not a very useful distinction for me.
If you'd just said "places like Austin have high crime" or something, we wouldn't be on this thread. But you said it was a "no-go zone", doubled down, then walked the definition back to "places I'd be comfortable hanging out with my kid in the park".
We can be done with the thread now; I'm happy with what it says about our respective arguments. My suggestion is maybe strike the term "no-go zone" from your vocabulary. It's mostly politically charged bullshit. But in any of its reasonable definitions, it doesn't apply to Austin, and didn't apply to Cabrini.
But you’ve posited in this comment that one criteria is the count of people getting shot in the last month. By that argument River North[0] is a no go zone. Which, perhaps it is for you, but thats not an interesting social commentary because it means that effectively all urban US neighborhoods are. Just say you won’t go to US urban environments. We get it.
At the end of the day, in Chicago, the tragic gun violence problem is real. But counter-intuitively its not real for people that _visit_ neighborhoods. Its real for the young men that live there. And by invoking “no-go” rhetoric you hide the real problem. That years of public policy have made certain neighborhoods extremely dangerous for those that live there, but ironically, not for those that visit.
[0] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-river-north-crime-c...
I grew up in pilsen which was gang controlled 'no go zone' until it got gentrified over last 1-2 decades on the east side. We knew which gangs controlled which areas, we are only a few blocks away from El Chapo's 'The Pilsen twins' family home ( never saw them though) . People who live here and raise families here know where 'no go zones' are and stay away from. If you visit any local here for a few you will get a lecture about which areas are 'no go' gang controlled zones ( south of cermak and west of western).
Ofcouse, you can 'go' to gentrified restaurants and coffee shops on 18th st/Thalia hall and get 'the experience' for outsiders and suburbanites. Doesn't mean there aren't no go zones in pilsen.
It frustrating to me that people who chose live in white segregated suburbs ( 'for aesthetic reasons', code for not too many non whites ) and send their kids to segregated schools are lecturing us what words to use and what to call ourselves. I personally detest these white ppl more than Tucker Carlson types. Yes they are 'no go zones' and govt/community should fix it, calling them 'problematic areas' instead isn't a fix.
I didn't invoke any 'rhetoric'. you link shows which areas are no go zones. https://abc7chicago.com/feature/tracking-crime-and-safety-in...
> By that argument River North[0] is a no go zone.
you posted one solitary example. Argument isn't 'one shooting' makes no-go zone. Try to finding other examples and you'll see.
This claim presupposes an objective definition of “no go zone” supporting the existence of actual examples.
Please provide the objective definition (ideally, with sourcing) and the evidence supporting the claim that “austin area in chicago” meets it.
I laughed on the inside a bit when I considered the fact that a public library existed just a few blocks down from the library of a large public university. But this was my youthful ignorance. Anyone could walk in the university library and open a book (well, you could at that time, not so sure about anymore) but you had to have a school ID card to check out a book or access the computer system.
Before cell phones, I visited libraries traveling around the coast. The computers were 100% taken. There was a line to get one, and the librarian directed us to a scheduling system. These were people who needed to use a computer and the internet to apply to a job. Access was scarce, low-quality, and competency to use those tools were lacking.
Nowadays, cell phones have mostly taken away that niche of the past. I'm not sure if or why the people there still need the libraries.
I was astounded to find that the small east-coast college town where I now live has a clean, bright, pleasant library that serves as a community educational space for all (not just the homeless or teenagers.) The bathrooms are usually spotless.
I wonder: how have massive cities like LA and NYC allowed their libraries defacto homeless shelters? It's a shame that public libraries in these cities are essentially unusable to the average taxpayer.
Somehow I doubt that all of the branch libraries of those systems are "homeless shelters." More likely the it's just the larger libraries near the actual shelters. Where "the average taxpayer" wouldn't spend time anyway.
Small college towns have a couple of real advantages over big cities in this regard. First, they're small, which helps a lot. Second, they tend to have more funding available per-capita than large cities do.
Also in the burbs, it's not a trivial task for homeless to even get to a place like the library, where in NYC it's pretty easy to get around.
I still use the library in NYC, but I agree that some locations aren't exactly great places to spend the day studying, but it very much depends on the branch. "unusable" feels like a stretch. I can still pickup books and get help from librarians if I need it.
I have a theory about this. Which is that the upper/upper-mid class in particular cares more about the image of a pristine library than they do the actual effectiveness/reach of that library. This theory shows itself quite a lot through how people talk about libraries: not in how many students find what they're looking for, how happy librarians are, how many grades or careers have been improved. It's bathrooms and walls.
Previously, there had been private libraries for the elite. Carnegie libraries, making public libraries widespread across the country, were known by uppity folks for attracting "undesirables." People of all races, genders, and social statuses were welcome there. Those were the original patrons. That was Carnegie's goal.
https://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie...
> Schools have opted out of their obligations to provide the best educations to the public instead tailoring the education to the least capable
Our current school system was designed to create compliant factory workers. They're still making an uncreative, docile workforce, but where are the jobs?
https://qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promote...
They've totally abandoned the the middle class and the lower class. That's why we're having these problems. Pitting middle class against lower class allows the upper class to get away with sucking every last penny out of society and abandoning the greater good.
The fact that Washington wasn’t further widening that gap between labor capital taxes by taxing regular income before adopting its capital gains tax is tangential.
“federal income tax” is only about 2/3 of federal taxes on income, and the other 1/3 is the much more bottom-weighted payroll tax.
And in any case, yes, high end earners of normal income (which can include some of the top 1%, ~$700k non-capital income isn’t unheard of) get heavily taxed; capital income is favored, not high non-capital income.
Yes, and doing that as a dedicated levy on labor rather than general revenue is a policy choice. It doesn't somehow not count as a tax.
> The amount you get in old age is directly proportional to how much you paid in
No, its not. Especially not for Medicare.
Libraries (and police, and other services) are left to deal with this problem by default, because we as a society don't value finding solutions to the problem enough to bother to do that.
But, as a society in general, I think we're not actually trying hard yet. We're still largely debating whether or not we should be.
It might be interesting to actually try to help these people before writing them off entirely like that.
I don't think they can be helped, but certainly letting them mill about in public libraries accomplishes what exactly? Yes, I write them off because I am a realist, not a utopian, and I write them off because on balance they cause so many problems for normal people.
It is not worth destroying nice places, cities, libraries, streets for pie in the sky morality that presumes mental illness to this degree or drug abuse can be overcome, or that it is worth all of the mess, harassment, violence, filth, and degradation that we all see everywhere waiting around for this supposed solution that never comes. It's not working.
There are already resource centers with services and supports that homeless need, which may duplicate what libraries already offer, eg. computers. They are staffed with people from their community as well.
Carnegie's vast wealth single-handedly forced the idea of libraries that weren't just for rich university students, privileged religious orders or the mind-bendingly affluent. He loved books and wanted to share them, which is very noble. But he also had no room for slackers. To quote wikipedia, quoting, Carnegie:
> Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others."
This vision of the public library as public welfare's physical manifestation is a modern invention that is not anchored in history. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be. My partner was a librarian for a long time and loved helping those in need. But let's make sure we're accurately remembering the past, not designing a convenient past to justify the budgets to do the work we see we need done in the present.
It didn't need to be. It wasn't like they were turning away the homeless with library door security guards back then. It simply wasn't a problem. From the article: "In every public place, the evidence of a social welfare system that has been chipped away at for decades is on display." The library has become a last resort, by default.
The solution is "doing things that are much more difficult: building more social housing, hiring more social workers, investing in mental health workers, schools, community centres, and everything else needed to address problems before they reach the library’s doors"
The poop on the street started maybe 15 years ago, along with the tent cities and the "ranching" of RVs.
The UK Public Libraries Act is from 1850. Boston Public Library was 1854. The first Carnegie library was opened in 1883, a whole generation later.
I no longer support libraries as they stand. Most of their current issues are self-inflicted. I will now lay out why. The Internet came along, and Google of course. (You remember when Google seemed to have the correct answer to everything, in the past) And then the scanning of books, and the librarians panicked. They had an identity crisis: What good is a library in the age of Google?
This contagious panic spread and the usual questions came about. "What will we be, then?" And they immediately started trying to be everything to everyone. In a university setting, that means that various small groups will immediately come looking. Maybe the library can help us! And so the library begins to do things outside of its original scope, further and further. We begin housing various student groups, despite not having enough space for books. Checking the logs of the prayer room and the breastfeeding room was a little bitter, but we still need that ... but we have too many books. Named faculty carrels, we keep those, but we have too many books. Bathrooms we have, but that one woman just likes to empty her bladder in the elevator. Librarians, in their helpfulness but lack of identity, have become janitors and people who help you fill out your tax forms and security guards who have to keep an eye out for that guy who likes to jerk off on Level A, in the back.
I received a survey from my library a couple of years ago. Multiple choice: "Are our libraries A) doing enough to help LGBTQ people? B) not doing enough?" Note the lack of the third option, maybe you're focusing on them too much because WHERE ARE THE BOOKS? My local "civilian" library doesn't seem to have anything to lend that isn't recent any longer. It's Redbox for books. The shelves are fewer, the shelves are shorter, the shelves have been shoved back for "community spaces." The local loan system is garbage, the statewide system is getting thinner and thinner, and inter-library loan beyond that, well, it used to be great, but they're shoveling out books (and I'm not talking about that thirty-ninth copy of Twilight which was once in hot demand but isn't any longer) that were once in most branches I visited.
Many academic libraries are playing a game of Hearts. There's only two ways to win Hearts. The first involves getting rid of your Hearts before the other players do, paring down books. The other involves trying to collect all the hearts, which makes you the hub of an interlibrary loan system that externalizes the cost of having and housing books, which is not insignificant. Before she retired, a librarian passed on to me a shocking paper describing the cost per year of the average book just to exist on a shelf. Most people don't think about that.
No, I don't think a middle ground is what is called for. Get back to books, by which I mean, the acquisition and organization of information such that the depth of it can be accessed by those in need of it, perhaps more so than they really understand, not just the first thing that Google (or ChatGPT) vomits out.
Same at my local library, singular focus on LGBT kids content and activism with all budgets entirely allocated to it. Would make sense to rebrand as state-run LGBTQ bookstores, more glam for the librarians than homeless shelters perhaps?
Which is OK. We honestly don't need libraries for what they are anymore. The reason is in the medium. When we want a book (or a CD or DVD or VHS tape or whatever) we don't want the physical object, we want the information inside. We no longer physically need the object to get at the information, we no longer need a central repository to store these objects for our convenience. Libraries have no reason to exist anymore.
The true libraries of today are maligned, banned, hated, called criminals. They are libgen, scipub and torrent trackers. They're done often for no profit, just for the sake of an ideological motivation to make information available. The medium has changed but people's desire for the information is still there. There are people out there keeping up the fight, but the ones trying to maintain a quite room full of shelves just refuse to see where the fight is going and are being left behind.
You are right that the people want the information inside, but you're missing the part where the subject librarian puts people in touch with the container that the user really wants (every user their book), even if they aren't stating it well to a search engine. And we both know how poorly people phrase things to search engines, or how a novice to the field simply does not know the correct terminology of the field (the jargon) to put in.
Of course, that cost will go up the fewer books there are. In my local library, it's a magnificent, 2 story tall building with only one story. The bookshelves are widely spaced, and not very tall. The shelves only are in one part of the floor space.
If libraries did not exist already, I couldn't even imagine them being funded now a days. A free place!? Where people can read books for free!?!?!?
And people who have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon trying to censor and control libraries have siezed on this, blaming libraries for endangering children. Really shameful behavior. Rather than solve social problems, let's demonize the few places where all people, if they behave themselves, are welcome.
Luckily the library cordons off the children’s section on a separate floor where adults aren’t generally permitted.
When shared social resources are turned into political operatives, it's not the fault of the opposition when they are attacked. If you want something to be treated as neutral, it needs to act with neutrality.
What constitutes "neutrality" is constantly changing. In order to remain politically neutral, in recent years, one would need to increasingly censor themselves.
For example, in 2019, wearing N95s during wildfire season to avoid inhaling smoke wasn't politically charged. Some people would wear them when outside and others didn't--nobody cared. This month, with wildfire smoke in the air, it has now become political (and decidedly not neutral) to say what was said in 2019--that N95s can help protect you from wildfire smoke.
No, I propose it is those that enable this problem and degrade our public spaces who should be ashamed.