We live in a fundamentally broken society today where rent-seekers want to break it further. No libraries would never be invented today. People like Carnegie who thrived in the industrial revolution recognized that and understood that education and social evolution was the path to prosperity and peace. When he studied recent history in his day, he probably pondered the decades of chaos and suffering kicked off by the French Revolution.
The modern plutocrat is mostly a strictly transactional affair, who has dumbed business down to resource extraction.
I became involved in my city's library system a few years ago when they did a branch expansion that I was initially opposed to for money reasons. I flipped and am now a library fan.
I discovered that it's an environment for learning, social interaction and collaboration. You have programs for little kids where they interact with books for the first time. The elementary kids start collaborating on computers and doing other programs. Older kids are building robots, reading manga, having fun in a meaningful, beneficial way.
The failed promise of the internet that I bought into in the 90s is that access to information will set you free. Yet we find ourselves dominated by propaganda via things like Facebook -- Internet is the new TV. The reality is that information in the context of a meaningful environment is the magic. The library adds value and context to information. It's a situation where the value is greater than the sum of the parts.
Would you count Project Gutenberg, archive.org or SciHub? I'd also add Bittorrent and other p2p networks as media libraries. I bet there is plenty of lesser known archives like http://web.textfiles.com/
More importantly, the library doesn't have an access fee. Computers and phones cost a nonzero amount of money; decent internet access, if available, can also be pretty pricey for people living check to check or worse.
They did reinvent them, but in the spirit of the times they're mostly located in neighborhoods that are already more educated, more wealthy, and already have public library access.
Is the idea that “book boxes are replacements for libraries” widely held?
I have one and that idea seems insane to me. The book box to me is a nice landscaping feature, a place to drink coffee with my neighbors, a signal about my politics, a way for us to unload books & my attempt to get rad comics to school kids. I’d never correlate it to a public lending library.
Wait nothing about that Atlantic article suggests people are funding libraries less because of book boxes? I'd be shocked if there was a correlation there (I'm not at all shocked by the correlation with book boxes and affluent neighborhoods).
Also as an aside, if you are thinking about doing a book box there is no need to give the littlefreelibrary organization money. You can just put one up.
It becomes another quiver in the arguments of small-government zealots. Why do we need social services when good Christians donate to charity? Why do we need public transit when Lyft and Uber are here to save the day?
> But Hale and Schmidt point to at least one place where Little Free Libraries are seen as a substitute for true public library services. When budget cuts caused the El Paso (Tex.) Public Library to implement a $50 annual fee for nonresidents to use the library system, the tiny town of nearby Vinton came up with a plan: five Little Free Libraries spread around the community. The town would build them, and keeping them stocked with books would be up to the people of Vinton themselves.
> When Detroit Public Library (DPL) closed its Gabriel Richard branch in 2011, 4th graders at a local elementary school installed a colorful painted bookcase and a sign reading “Outdoor Library” in front of the shuttered building. It was one of four libraries to close that year—two have since reopened, though only two to three days a week.
Again in both of those places the book boxes were reactions to changes in the library funding not causes.
I see the argument could be made. I’m wondering how often it is.
And I’d be shocked if it was ever made by people who are housing book boxes. Quite the opposite I’d bet they were generally strong proponents of public libraries.
I have to disagree that libraries wouldn't be invented today if they didn't already exist. Part of me feels that the trend of people moving back to the city is people seeking a greater desire to be a part of something greater than themselves and be able to participate in public life. It's more than simply an aversion to traffic.
Given that libraries are largely funded locally, should they not have existed, we would be seeking out the creation of more shared public spaces that don't require you to spend money to spend time there. These sorts of 3rd places are important, although I do agree that the modern plutocrat isn't the sort of person who is likely very safe when it comes to visiting these sorts of public spaces, and hence have an aversion to them.
>If libraries didn't already exist, I can't imagine the copyright lobby allowing them to be invented.
Libraries legally own the material they lend out, and have the legal right to lend it. They exist because of copyright law, not in spite of it.
And if the "copyright lobby" (whatever that is) was so powerful, there are any number of things they could have stopped, like VCRs or photocopiers or even the internet itself.
The modern plutocrat is mostly a strictly transactional affair, who has dumbed business down to resource extraction.
I became involved in my city's library system a few years ago when they did a branch expansion that I was initially opposed to for money reasons. I flipped and am now a library fan.
I discovered that it's an environment for learning, social interaction and collaboration. You have programs for little kids where they interact with books for the first time. The elementary kids start collaborating on computers and doing other programs. Older kids are building robots, reading manga, having fun in a meaningful, beneficial way.
The failed promise of the internet that I bought into in the 90s is that access to information will set you free. Yet we find ourselves dominated by propaganda via things like Facebook -- Internet is the new TV. The reality is that information in the context of a meaningful environment is the magic. The library adds value and context to information. It's a situation where the value is greater than the sum of the parts.