850,000 people have to share just 2 copies of Thompson's Calculus Made Easy. (I didn't cherry pick this: I looked up at my bookshelf and picked the first book I saw.)

Very little of the money is spent on books. Only 15% of the money is spent on 'collections', and much of that is spent on things other than books.

SF libraries are nice for children (lots of copies of kids' books, lots of desks to do homework when waiting for parents to get back from work).

But I personally don't find them a convenient source for reading material as, if I want a particular book, they usually don't have it.

SFPL's own stats say they see over 10,000 visitors per day and check out over 12 million items annually. Let's say you allocate 50% ($100M) to each of those two missions: serving as a community space vs. lending materials.

That gives you:

- As a community space: $100M ÷ (10,000 visitors × 365 days) = ~$27 per visit. You could hand every person who walks in a $27 gift card to a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi and they'd arguably get a comparable experience for many use cases.

- As a lending library: $100M ÷ 12,000,000 checkouts = ~$8.30 per checkout. You could just buy most paperbacks and many e-books for that price and give them away.

Would a library ever lend porn out? I'm guessing no, because of the lack of social value. To the extent that bodice rippers are like porn, the same rationale would apply.

Then we also have a larger inter-library loan, where I can request things from libraries far, far away (even in another state). It takes much longer, though, and if it is deemed a popular/useful item, my local library may decide to purchase it and give that one to me rather than use ILL.

You may want to check if your local library has something similar.