Comment by phil21

2 days ago

This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here. Your average person should be able to find utility in a library.

University libraries of course might be a good exception to this rule. But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should.

It's always going to be a balance for librarians. They don't get to operate in ivory towers disconnected from those local taxpayers whom fund them.

4 comments

phil21

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anigbrowl  2 days ago

Utility is in having a big selection of books. If a large chunk of the library is just multiple copies of previously popular books, then you are cutting people off from discover the range of books that are available. I would never have found authors like Stanislaw Lem or or Robert Heinlein as a teenager if it hadn't been for the library; the science fiction sections in bookstores at the time were clogged with movie adaptation novellas and mostly forgettable trilogies/franchise works.

As a library-funding taxpayer myself, I find it very depressing that the selection in my local libraries is so lacking. Hence my remark about the vast superiority of second-hand bookstores for just about any topic.

sapphicsnail  2 days ago

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family. And that means providing the materials they want to read - not what you think they should.

It's pretty classicist to assume that only rich people are reading those kinds of books. I have plenty of friends who struggle to pay rent who read dense stuff like philosophy, lit. theory, etc. This whole David Brooks style paternalism drives me crazy.

Amezarak  2 days ago

> This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here.

Why should I support a public entertainment center? The original American libraries were created to make valuable and educational works accessible to the public, not pulp. Library systems all over the country have discarded most of this stuff in favor of political, romance, mysteries and kids books. Abandoning their original mission is exactly why their public support has collapsed. Nobody cares about a place for homeless people to browse the Internet or to check out video games and movies.

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family.

"Reading" is already maximally accessible, nobody needs a library to do this. Kids are reading reams and reams of web fiction. If anything, the increasingly low quality of library fare is related to the poor reading level of Americans generally - children's books have become especially atrocious, but even pulp mystery fiction is written on a very low reading level. “We have to get them to READ” is a completely pointless and meaningless goal if the public benefit is to keep up romance fiction publisher profits.