One of the sad realities about physical libraries is that they are dying, at least in American university systems that have been parasitized by management consulting firms.
For instance, Georgia Tech recently moved their physical collection to off-campus stacks shared with Emory University, and both the University of South Carolina and Texas A&M University systems are downsizing collections and moving towards an access model reliant on the ILL system. The A&M system has even gone further and largely eliminated tenure for librarians. Other university systems, like the one in my snall state, have started to push checking out ebooks over physical books in various ways, possibly in preparation for more drastic changes like this, or at least so that they can begin downsizing their collections
This doesn't just affect students at universities, since many public institutions have historically offered community borrowing, and often have extremely rare books that simply aren't available otherwise
It's a complicated issue since this phenomenon is driven partly by user demand -- students are reading much less than they used to, and far less in the way of physical books, and university systems are responding to changes in demand. It's still sad to see
I periodically go to the Library of Congress to read things for various side projects. It's sad how few people actually use the Library of Congress as a library. There are a lot of tourists there. I usually go to the Science and Business Reading Room, which avoids most of the tourists as they check out the Main Reading Room. But attendance is usually sparse, perhaps 2 dozen per day.
The Library of Congress is an amazing free resource with a significant fraction of what's ever been published. They too seem to be pushing more and more off-site, but not to the extent that university libraries are. I can find a lot of rare books there that I would not have access to otherwise, and I've also used their technical reports collection extensively.
I'm not sure what I would do if the various research libraries I frequent were to reduce services or close. I've been saving a ton of PDF files over the years and I guess I could make do with what I have.
Seconding this. I haven't been there in forty years, but back in the day the place was a goldmine of hard-to-find books. And a housemate told me that it wasn't hard to get "stack privileges" (the right to actually physically browse the stacks) if you made a sufficiently favorable impression on the staff.
> students are reading much less than they used to, and far less in the way of physical books
There is the answer. It's really hard to justify when usage is so low.
I am not under the illusion that "everything is on the internet". The best information is in books. But it's hard to argue University libraries aren't mostly study areas, and the books are symbolic. I wouldn't be surprised if its budget is already under "alumni outreach".
This is perhaps another symptom of the weird mix of undergrad, with a government research institution attached.
I agree they are symbolic, but I believe we should see them as a symbol of how much knowledge has been created that yet remains potentially untapped and unexplored.
I'm sure people would make an argument to the effect that writing that has existed for X years or decades would have already been tapped if it was of any value, and I would respond by saying many publications make little impact on their contemporaries only to be discovered later to have been ahead of their time.
If we start using "engagement" as a metric for the retention of writing, then knowledge will suffer under the tyranny of the majority. Instead I think the most unread books in a library should be celebrated and promoted by the librarians for the sake of having been unread, even if it ends up being kind of funny how bad they are.
Sounds like a noble project. Why does each University need to do that though?
> many publications make little impact on their contemporaries only to be discovered later to have been ahead of their time.
I would say this is evidence that books do not represent a "infinitely growing body of human knowledge". Knowledge is only alive in the people using it.
Students do read, it's just that they prefer to burn their energy on course textbooks, which libraries have in very low supply. It's very hard to be a student that avoids buying books and instead borrows their way through university.
Library books solely as interior design is still better than 99% of the decorative architecture campuses are covered in that use up orders of magnitude more space.
What is funny is that the background one sees on remote interviews on TV is nearly always a bookshelf. The books are carefully curated to give the right impression to the viewer. I wonder if the person had actually read them, or it is just window decoration.
One person had the books he'd authored lined up on his shelf.
Sadly, I rarely am able to read the titles on the spines. A bit too out of focus.
There's a great pic of Werner von Braun in his office, with the inevitable bookshelf behind him. I was able to read some of the titles, and looked them up. Classic rocket books! The ultimate nerd bookshelf.
> What is funny is that the background one sees on remote interviews on TV is nearly always a bookshelf. The books are carefully curated to give the right impression to the viewer. I wonder if the person had actually read them, or it is just window decoration.
There are rental bookshelves available for decorative or studio purposes actually, which are purely put together to give the impression of erudition. When doing scholarly photoshoots, posing in front of the office bookshelf is a common choice.
Haha...I often don't pay attention to the interview itself and spend the entire time bothering my wife with questions like, 'I wonder why they picked that book/picture/background?'
I recall debating a historical point with a person who would send me cites in the form of TikTok clips. Coincidentally, I have two entire books on the subject, by two accomplished historians. Both books demolished all of his points.
Just for fun, compare a transcript of the movie "Oppenheimer" with the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". You're looking at a transcript of the movie of a few pages vs a 750 page small print tome. There's no way "Oppenheimer" makes one well informed about the Manhattan Project.
Think of what a librarian could be today in the context of LLMs — there are completely different ways of accessing and organizing information — ways that will continually evolve in next few years.
In Europe it is legal to scan library books and use the contents with ML, per EU directive.
Still the case in 2025, at least at all the universities I frequent.
I like reading through the oldest books in the collections and ones related to my field / hobbies, but other than that, I don't know of anyone who actually checks out books from the archives.
They've essentially become glorified quiet lobby areas that off-campus commuters use as a common space between classes.
I have often heard this described as a change in how people of different generations access information. Younger people today are used to using search bars to find what they need immediately [1], but older people like myself grew up used to it taking time to find relevant information, and often had to organize the information ourselves. Younger people aren't using the library because from their perspective, information is just available everywhere and immediately available on top of that. From their perspective, there simply is not need to go to the library if you can find what you need immediately.
I personally think it is horrible that many universities are selling their physical collections, but I just want to post some reasoning as to why there is a shift in usage. As a researcher, I think that being able to get an immediate answer is often great, but the problem is that it prevents you from exploring the information more deeply and broadly. It gives you a false sense of finality that doesn't require you to question what you are reading more closely or more broadly by examining many sources (like the neighboring books on a library shelf). And when you are doing deep research, that really is a skill you need.
Perhaps it’s changed, but my experience is that most information just isn’t available online.
Eg, UW had microfiche and book collections of many periodicals going back to the 1800s, which I haven’t seen a digitized version of. By contrast, I often have trouble finding a digital article I know I read a few years ago.
Similarly, specialty libraries like the math library that had many out of print books — many of which were relevant to my own work.
I actually agree with you completely. That is why I emphasized that I was just giving their perspective. I don't think most information is available online, let alone available online immediately.
I've even had the same experience with you even it comes to microfiche in university collections. For my PhD, I had to request a lot of older government research reports from the 1970s and 1980s. None of it was online, but a lot of it was available on microfiche. I'd request a box with a range of report numbers, wait a few days for it to come to the reading room, and then go into the reading room to read and maybe scan the report if it was relevant. And often the specific report I wanted would not be in the box when I got there, since I only knew what ranges of reports were available, not which individual report was available. I'll note again that this is a much slower process, taking days to find one relevant bit of information, but that doesn't mean it is not valuable or necessary. I've found a lot of interesting information that way, and none of it was available online at the time.
I absolutely believe it, but it feels so crazy as the libraries, both as a student and as a community member at various points, for the local universities are by far the most useful and important resource they provide.
But are they reading books? At the college campus here, there are many students in the library, but the proportion that are reading books there seems to have gone down over time.
You can check out books from the library and read them anywhere. Why do students need to read them in the library? If you are conducting certain research you need books as not everything is digitally available. Granted, most students are not doing this kind of thorough research.
That's true, but are they checking out books? :-) I just mean that from what I've seen, young people use libraries as a study space at least as much as they use them to obtain books (either for on-premises readng or for checkout).
I know someone who works at a public library in a small city. A lot of their work is "managing" homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicted customers who are attracted by shelter and free computers and internet.
I don't particularly have a problem with public funds going toward that, but I don't think library staff are trained or signed up for that work, or that libraries are an appropriate and cost effective way to help these people.
I don't think libraries should be sacred. They're nice to look at and nostalgic, but are increasingly anachronisms. Specialized facilities for higher education and historical research I can see still having some use, perhaps small school libraries, but the average public library not so much. They use a lot of space, a lot of floor space for books, requires staffing.
I think the article linked is saying that libraries should be sacred _because_ they are nice to be in. They make people feel better about their life and the world based on some seemingly rigorous survey results.
IMO the mindset that everything everything has to be optimized to not use up “too much floor space” if it presumably doesn’t return enough measurable value is the kind of mentality that causes societal issues that we need nice libraries to counteract.
> I think the article linked is saying that libraries should be sacred _because_ they are nice to be in.
Yeah, and I'm saying they shouldn't be.
> They make people feel better about their life and the world based on some seemingly rigorous survey results.
> IMO the mindset that everything everything has to be optimized to not use up “too much floor space” if it presumably doesn’t return enough measurable value is the kind of mentality that causes societal issues that we need nice libraries to counteract.
It's not that it's too much floor space, it's that it costs too much for the benefit it provides. With government expenditure in western countries approaching or even exceeding 40% of GDP with no sign of slowing and social problems that seem to be worse than ever in some cases, I would say that efficiency of government service delivery is critically important. It's not even hyper optimizing, just basic optimizing would be nice.
I get your point and posit thus: What about National Parks? Should they be sacred or should they too be butchered for 'floor space'? Large organized spaces relieve cognitive load, remove subconscious restrictions that we impose on ourselves and expand the mind. With no limits placed on the eye, the limits on the spirit dissolve as well. Nothing feels impossible. If this is not worth pursuing 'at all costs', if even this is subject to 'optimization', if unshackling of the intellect is 'not sacred': then let's begin with reclaiming land occupied by the Hagia Sophia and La Sagrada Familia.
No I don't think national parks should be sacred, but I don't think they or public libraries should "be butchered for 'floor space'". I think options should always be measured and considered.
If we are measuring the cost of libraries is a drop in the bucket relative to national debt and GDP. The immeasurable benefit they provide to communities is so worth their tiny relative cost.
Libraries aren't sacred to begin with. They're not like cows in India (if not in reality, then proverbially), popping up wherever they please, and nobody can do anything about it. Oh well, had this nice business here, but then someone opened a library, and since they are sacred, we had to move. That's not the situation.
Libraries taking up too much floor space doesn't mean much, since so does anything else. At the same time, they and all other things also take up too little floor space, since "taking up floor space" by itself doesn't really mean anything I can discern. Libraries are unique, and valuable; what other unique and valuable thing does their existence prevent?
To measure things you need at least two things. Maybe even three: an object to measure, a scale or another object to compare to, and some sort of heuristic as to what the result might mean (for you). It's pointless to say that it doesn't satisfy your standards of "usefulness" or what exactly your concern is, if you don't share those standards.
> It's not that it's too much floor space, it's that it costs too much for the benefit it provides.
It costs way less than Facebook or a server farm full of GPT instances and provides more benefit and less harm. Our society has really warped the notion of what appropriate costs and benefits are.
You have a really warped notion of appropriate public service delivery if you think the only options are public libraries or "Facebook" or a server farm full of GPT instances. But I don't think your comment was in good faith, perhaps because you are incapable of actually addressing what I wrote.
What you wrote is that a library "costs too much for the benefit it provides". What I'm saying is that there are many other things we currently pay more for that provide even less benefit, so in relative terms libraries are quite far down the list of expenses to be worried about.
You certainly implied they were the only two options, and you did not say anything remotely suggesting you were talking about other things that are more wasteful! You're just making all that up now.
Anyway the topic is libraries. I did not say that no other things should be examined for their value for money, I was just talking about libraries. And the government sure should make good spending decisions on everything they spend money on! What kind of suggestion is that??
> It's not even hyper optimizing, just basic optimizing would be nice.
It feels a little bit like hyper optimizing. According to [0], the US spent $14.6B on libraries in 2020. The vast majority of that was from local municipalities, with state funding accounting for ~$1B and federal funding only $80M (disclaimer: I have not put any effort into verifying these numbers). It seems like our time would be better spent optimizing larger, more expensive programs before really pushing to make improvements here.
Assuming the numbers I linked above are correct or at least in the ballpark:
At the federal level, pretty much anything else, since it’s already not really spending any money on libraries, relatively speaking.
At the state/local level, it’s harder to say since there are many more administrative units involved, each with their own budget and operating model. (This also makes it hard to optimize in general, since you’d have to apply the optimizations independently across many polities.)
If I use my city as an example, library funding is 5% of the city budget. The state provides no funding to any library, so this is the entire amount the libraries get. It’s the second smallest spend by category as the city tracks such things —- though there is an “other” category that represents 10% of the budget. The bulk of the spending is on police (23%), fire (17%), and public works (11%). Obviously these are also critical services (basically everything in the city budget is!), so it’s not easy to do cost cutting there either, but there’s proportionally more room for improvement.
Data have shown time and time again that for every dollar spent on a public library the community return on investment is four $4 dollars. Public libraries are more efficient and effective the more they are used. The more a book is checked out the more people have enjoyed it or learned from it. Also, where else can you go without being forced to spend money? A lot of people can't afford these materials, just like they could not afford to pay for their own security (police) or put out fires by paying for private firefighters. Also, most libraries make up less than 5% of their municipal budgets, often closer to 1% in big cities. Seems like a good investment to me.
I agree with you that librarians have a very hard job. I also think from a budgeting standpoint that public libraries overspend on best sellers, but that’s a different comment. Hah.
> I don't think libraries should be sacred.
An old business partner used to ask, “what dies first, democracy or the library?”
Libraries represent democracy and the free flow of information. Their analog nature makes them much harder to turn off or alter than a website. It’s no surprise the new admin called book bans “hoaxes” so they can continue. I fear we may learn the answer to my friend’s question.
Homeless people go to libraries because libraries are the only public space left that hasn't been commodified and commercialized. Killing them in the name of even higher profits is not a solution.
Homeless people are still people. The public library is one of the few places they are allowed without being judged. Yes, there are mental health issues and libraries are not meant to "manage" them. However, providing a means for no-cost life-long learning for everyone is essential to their mission. The idea of the public library you have is outdated. Try visiting your local library and see how they have changed.
One thing we have at the local library which I'm surprised hasn't caught on more broadly is a maker space. They teach classes and once you've taken them you can us things like sewing machines, 3D printers/scanners, laser cutters, CNC machines etc (https://ppld.assabetinteractive.com/library-of-things/by-obj...).
The basement of our local library is a maker space, with a lot of that same equipment (maybe not CNC machines, but they have embroidery machines, silhouette cutters, 3d printers, laser cutters, etc), and also has sound rooms for recording podcasts or music.
I also found out last year they have an extensive manga collection (multiple shelves in both the teen and adult areas), so I've been taking advantage of that to read thousands of dollars worth of manga for free (I've bought copies of a few favorites afterwards, though).
Libraries are the secret weapon of the truly excellent.
My late art foundation director friend would occasionally write art theory and critiques for books and curatorial pieces, and I remember wondering how he was able to get across so many references and so much material to write so eloquently?
Of course he'd been working since the 70's, but it wasn't till I set foot in a public library that I was like "Aha... surely this was his secret weapon.".
Agreed. I mean, this applies to various kinds of things, not just libraries: there used to be many more retail stores of various kinds (record stores, video rental shops, hobby stores, whatever) where you could browse and encounter things you hadn't intended or expected to encounter.
I was thinking of record stores as well. I spent so much of my life in those. Now on the rare occasion when I go into one, I have the uncanny sense of being back in the distant past, or back in a dream I had mostly woken up from.
I've found myself going to thrift stores a lot more these days than I used to because they're among the dwindling number of places left where there's still that experience of browsing and frequently seeing stuff you didn't expect to see.
Definitely experienced this in the Los Altos public library - one of my favorites. Combing through a stack and really feeling that a librarian's mind had placed these particular groupings together.
Was it Benjamin Franklin who established the public library system in the US? I think it was one of the greatest achievements in civilization. Every town in the US has a nice library for people to relax and to immerse themselves in knowledge or in an beautiful imaginary world.
Andrew Carnegie basically invented the public library system as we know it in the USA. He built a library in like every town. Thousands of them, I think.
He credited reading books for his success and passed the privilege to everyone else.
Well, largish town in the northeast for the most part.
When my family moved to the rural county in Virginia my father chose to retire to, the county "library" was a metal carrel of used paperbacks in one corner of the basement of the old Courthouse, open two afternoons a week, staffed by a volunteers from a local ladies auxiliary --- it took almost 3 decades of fund-raising before they were able to build a library on a small plot of land donated by the local school system.
Yeah, but if you look at this list from the perspective of a kid in rural Virginia in the mid-70s --- there were only six in the state, two of them in a city on the coast, and three were academic libraries which were a long ways away, and not within the realm of possibility of visiting and most of them were already closed (only one is still operating as a library).
Didn't get to the nearby college library until a class trip for my senior paper --- in addition to the research for that, checked out a copy of Knuth's _TeX and METAFONT_ which changed the course of my life.
In addition to membership libraries, Benjamin Franklin also played a role in the development of the first lending library. In 1790, Franklin donated a collection of books to a Massachusetts town that named itself after him. Though the town asked Franklin to donate a bell, he determined that "sense" was more important than "sound." Franklin residents voted for those donated books to be freely available for town members, creating the nation's first public library.
I enjoyed many library programs growing up. But my local library now is a homeless shelter and pornography rental. Luckily they have a separate area for kids, but even then it's not a place I want to leave my 4 year old outside of a 10ft radius.
It's just unfortunate that every public facility becomes an overflow for super-users, instead of addressing their needs directly.
I highly recommend Klinenberg's Palaces for the People, which he named after Carnegie's phrase for libraries. Here's an interview he did on 99% Invisible:
I wonder what reasons caused commercial libraries to be easily accessible in my home town of Chennai but the general viewpoint in my now home of San Francisco is that they can't exist. I suppose the biggest differences are cost of materials, cost of labour, and land use requirements.
Libraries do naturally arise from the first-sale doctrine here. I think they would not exist in SF but perhaps Walnut Creek etc would have some.
Commercial libraries = private library where you pay a membership fee? I’ve not really heard of that here outside of arguably university libraries and similar.
But SF public library has a couple dozen branches or more?
Yes. I had a membership for years. The place looks 19th century, which it is. There are multiple levels of stacks over two floors, carved dark wood, comfy chairs, and librarians who scold anyone who talks.
Members can go there, plug in a laptop, and type. Quietly. It's never crowded.
It's a well-curated, library. It's most useful if you want historical information about 19th and early 20th century technology. They have a complete bound set of Popular Mechanics, from the days when it was a serious technical publication. The multi-volume engineering study for the Panama Canal, with drawings, is there. Current offerings are well chosen and updated regularly.
Yes, the one I went to as a child had a monthly fee and a per-book fee. It had a far more extensive collection than the SFPL library at 4th and Berry in a much more compact space. Most SFPL libraries appear to be homeless-support centers, which diminishes their capacity to carry books since they assign greater room to support functions. But perhaps that is the source of the value observed in the OP.
As an aside, are there university libraries one can join directly for a fee? I was under the impression they were bundled in with tuition etc. If it’s around $100/month I wouldn’t mind that, but perhaps that is an unachievable target.
One thing worth noting, these accesses do not always include access to electronic resources. Access may only be available from computers that are in the library.
Personally I've never heard of or been to any commercial library before, perhaps it's really good startup idea with internal coffee shop (library first, cafeteria second).
I've been to coffee and books cafe (basically cafeteria first, library second) in France and normally it's full during the day (close at 7 pm).
In the US, there are some private archives. And university libraries with varying degrees of public access somewhat depending upon the degree that you can walk in and look like you belong. But real public libraries don't generally have a lot of restrictions.
Pay fees for access. Pay more fees to "skip the queue" for reserving books. Enjoy ads on your mandatory library app AND in your paid-for library space.
Yeeesh. No thanks. A modern public library is a simple reminder that we CAN have good things.
And they'll sell your reading habit information. And since it'd be commercial the "pen register" jurisprudence applies meaning that the government can use it to put you on a list. This last point is prevented for public libraries because being part of the government they're bound from gathering that kind of information under the first amendment.
These exist -- see the Mechanics Library in San Francisco. I haven't been there in a while, but it's not as bleak as you suggest. It isn't so different from many public libraries, except less busy and quieter.
I think many private libraries like Mechanics are nonprofits and aren't primarily funded by membership dues, so have little incentive to engage in dark patterns like this
It wouldn't be hard to imagine paying a not for profit institution directly instead of via taxes. Then its funding would be unaffected by political vagaries, as it would be funded by people's choice.
Because libraries are often used by the people who can least afford it. They offer resume classes, ESL, computer literacy, some will even have collections of clothes that can be borrowed for job interviews. Libraries should be a public service, not a private institution.
I understand what libraries do, but one doesn't preclude the other. Not for profits and charities are basically a one-way funnel of money from people who have it to people who don't, modulo not for profit salaries.
I was referring to large grants from wealthy donors, which is how nonprofits operate. To be entirely revenue funded a library would have to charge gym membership prices. I don’t see people going for it.
Netflix was still pretty niche in 2009. You’ve got a lot of poor friends? Who were movie buffs?
Legal, reader-friendly digital public libraries are likely to remain very difficult (if not impossible) to create without copyright reform, such as first-sale doctrine for ebooks.
I love libraries and the huge benefit to society (especially low income individuals) libraries provide, but my biggest frustration is the lack of spaces to take video calls (personal or work) and the early hours they close. It would be nice for libraries to be available past 6pm for those that work a regular 9-5.
For example, to my knowledge, there's not a single place reasonably convenient in NY Bryant Park library or Stavros Foundation library where I can take video calls. In more suburban cities I frequent, the hours are often 9-5 with a Sunday operating 1-5pm.
It also frustrates me so much that coffee shops (establishments expecting purchases to stay) function more conveniently than libraries as a place I can sit down and work.
I've done video calls from the roof of Stavros Foundation Library, but that's weather dependent.
Actually, now that I think of it, I've also done at least one video call from the halls of the Stephen A. Schwarzman research branch across the street. Granted, these are not dedicated co-working spaces where you can make any noise you wish, but some calls are possible.
Apparently Zuckerbucks has spent more, infation-adjusted, on GPUs for "AI" than Carnegie spent on libraries and, inflation-adjusted, Carnegie was wealthier than Schmuckerberg.
As for Meta's effect on "well-being", that is a question left for the reader.
A new library branch, the first new one in the Brooklyn system in over 30 years, opened on the ground floor of my building. It's been the biggest quality of life boost I ever remember experiencing that didn't involve a move. The librarians know me by name because I put so many board games on hold.
If I want to survey the effectiveness of Post Office in the era of Internet (email, messenger, etc), I'd definitely interview mainly the visitors to the Post office to check their their purposes, experiences and activities there. For example, you'll probably find someone posting a postcard inside the post office since that someone is probably a visiting tourist.
Why wouldn't you sample a random set of potential post office users?
If you wanted to know what parents think of public schools, would you survey only the parents who currently send their kids there, or would it also be informative to know the opinions of the parents whose children educated elsewhere?
It would depend on what type of data you're collecting. If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are worthless, you need to talk to people who've spent actual time with it. If you're looking to get impressions of a service, then sure, ask anyone and everyone.
Just because someone doesn't currently use X, it doesn't mean they've never used X.
And even if someone has never used X, it doesn't mean they haven't done extensive research about X, before concluding X doesn't meet their quality bar.
Before deciding whether to send my son to an SFUSD school, I had a call with the principal of the school and asked questions specific to my son's situation. Do you think my conclusions are worthless for understanding the quality of the service?
Not useless by any means, but if given the choice between somebody who interviewed the principal and a somebody else who's son actually attends, I'd prefer the latter every time. Wouldn't you?
Also, while I get your point, you're in the very unique position of informed non-users. That's a valuable category if you can access it, but it's the most difficult. (How can you determine which library non-attendants have done their research?)
OK, so we agree that your previous statement was overstated, right?
"If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are worthless"
given the choice between somebody who interviewed the principal and a somebody else who's son actually attends, I'd prefer the latter every time. Wouldn't you?
Not every time, no. You seem to be suggesting that no single informed non-user could be more useful than the least useful user.
"If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are essentially worthless."
I'm suggesting that, in absence of some out-of-band signaling mechanism, the expectation value for usefulness of individual feedback is orders of magnitude greater for users than non-users.
Put differently, if I happened to be interested in this SFUSD school as well, is there some list of people like you I should interview?
Put differently, if I happened to be interested in this SFUSD school as well, is there some list of people like you I should interview?
No, but I can point you to a FB group where you can ask for anyone that faced the same decision before. Some of them will have gone one way, and some the other. You can learn from both.
I'm suggesting that, in absence of some out-of-band signaling mechanism, the expectation value for usefulness of individual feedback is orders of magnitude greater for users than non-users.
This might be true for things that most people don't need (like ski boots) but it's not true for things that most people use, like the post office. That was the point I was making here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42861928
If you got to the post office to find out about people's experience, your sample will be biased: you will mostly be interviewing people who use the post office much more often than the median post office user.
I go to the post office 1-2 times per year. People like me will be both:
- underrepresented in your sample, and
- be the least likely to have adapted to any difficulties getting to know how the post office works
Some folks who are heavy users of parcel services will have stopped using the post office completely. They will be totally unrepresented in your sample, even though you'd like to know why they use UPS instead of USPS.
I do see your point and agree it can be valuable data. What I'm arguing is specifically that the economics of it are extremely unfavorable.
Having a relevant Facebook group is about the best case scenario. I guess email might work? Maybe letters? I can't imagine calling or canvasing.
On top of all that I still think the data from actual users is still going to be more valuable overall, even the negative stuff. I'd prefer somebody who attended the school and had a bad experience than somebody who had a bad impression and went elsewhere.
But... I'll agree it's not worthless. It just strongly depends on the type of data you want to collect. For impressions and onboarding, it's a different story. Here's the goal of this study:
> NYPL regularly surveys its patrons to understand and improve how the Library fits into—and adds value to—their lives. We strive to identify the unique power of public libraries, pinpointing precise mechanisms of positive impact, so that we can preserve and strengthen that impact.
If you were to survey people in a place where the library mainly serves as shelter for people without homes, you would conclude that the most important thing is that, and there's no point maintaining collections of books.
If you believe that public libraries serve some purpose, you have to start with that, rather than just using gradient descent to get to somewhere. Otherwise why wouldn't libraries evolve into hospitals, or podcast studios, or brothels?
I actually agree with the article, but this piece feels like a conflict of interest — a library conducting research on how libraries improve everything.
Maybe it's hard to justify studying the positive affects of libraries (and third spaces generally) within a community to a non-library inclined audience.
Anecdote: While chronically underfunded to a overwhelming degree, local libraries and their staff in my area have consistently stepped up to the plate by trying to support the communities. Most notably when schools around here stopped offering any sort of afterschool/enrichment programing internally for kids, the libraries basically just added to their model.
One of the sad realities about physical libraries is that they are dying, at least in American university systems that have been parasitized by management consulting firms.
For instance, Georgia Tech recently moved their physical collection to off-campus stacks shared with Emory University, and both the University of South Carolina and Texas A&M University systems are downsizing collections and moving towards an access model reliant on the ILL system. The A&M system has even gone further and largely eliminated tenure for librarians. Other university systems, like the one in my snall state, have started to push checking out ebooks over physical books in various ways, possibly in preparation for more drastic changes like this, or at least so that they can begin downsizing their collections
This doesn't just affect students at universities, since many public institutions have historically offered community borrowing, and often have extremely rare books that simply aren't available otherwise
It's a complicated issue since this phenomenon is driven partly by user demand -- students are reading much less than they used to, and far less in the way of physical books, and university systems are responding to changes in demand. It's still sad to see
I periodically go to the Library of Congress to read things for various side projects. It's sad how few people actually use the Library of Congress as a library. There are a lot of tourists there. I usually go to the Science and Business Reading Room, which avoids most of the tourists as they check out the Main Reading Room. But attendance is usually sparse, perhaps 2 dozen per day.
The Library of Congress is an amazing free resource with a significant fraction of what's ever been published. They too seem to be pushing more and more off-site, but not to the extent that university libraries are. I can find a lot of rare books there that I would not have access to otherwise, and I've also used their technical reports collection extensively.
I'm not sure what I would do if the various research libraries I frequent were to reduce services or close. I've been saving a ton of PDF files over the years and I guess I could make do with what I have.
Seconding this. I haven't been there in forty years, but back in the day the place was a goldmine of hard-to-find books. And a housemate told me that it wasn't hard to get "stack privileges" (the right to actually physically browse the stacks) if you made a sufficiently favorable impression on the staff.
> students are reading much less than they used to, and far less in the way of physical books
There is the answer. It's really hard to justify when usage is so low.
I am not under the illusion that "everything is on the internet". The best information is in books. But it's hard to argue University libraries aren't mostly study areas, and the books are symbolic. I wouldn't be surprised if its budget is already under "alumni outreach".
This is perhaps another symptom of the weird mix of undergrad, with a government research institution attached.
I agree they are symbolic, but I believe we should see them as a symbol of how much knowledge has been created that yet remains potentially untapped and unexplored.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antili...
I'm sure people would make an argument to the effect that writing that has existed for X years or decades would have already been tapped if it was of any value, and I would respond by saying many publications make little impact on their contemporaries only to be discovered later to have been ahead of their time.
If we start using "engagement" as a metric for the retention of writing, then knowledge will suffer under the tyranny of the majority. Instead I think the most unread books in a library should be celebrated and promoted by the librarians for the sake of having been unread, even if it ends up being kind of funny how bad they are.
Sounds like a noble project. Why does each University need to do that though?
> many publications make little impact on their contemporaries only to be discovered later to have been ahead of their time.
I would say this is evidence that books do not represent a "infinitely growing body of human knowledge". Knowledge is only alive in the people using it.
“If we start using "engagement" as a metric for the retention of writing, then knowledge will suffer under the tyranny of the majority.”
Wow, that is so well written.
It summarizes many of the problems of today and the disappointing aspects of technological effort and its applications.
Students do read, it's just that they prefer to burn their energy on course textbooks, which libraries have in very low supply. It's very hard to be a student that avoids buying books and instead borrows their way through university.
Nearly impossible. Text books at the library get recalled constantly.
Space really isn’t that scarce.
Library books solely as interior design is still better than 99% of the decorative architecture campuses are covered in that use up orders of magnitude more space.
What is funny is that the background one sees on remote interviews on TV is nearly always a bookshelf. The books are carefully curated to give the right impression to the viewer. I wonder if the person had actually read them, or it is just window decoration.
One person had the books he'd authored lined up on his shelf.
Sadly, I rarely am able to read the titles on the spines. A bit too out of focus.
There's a great pic of Werner von Braun in his office, with the inevitable bookshelf behind him. I was able to read some of the titles, and looked them up. Classic rocket books! The ultimate nerd bookshelf.
I wonder what is on Elon's bookshelf!
> What is funny is that the background one sees on remote interviews on TV is nearly always a bookshelf. The books are carefully curated to give the right impression to the viewer. I wonder if the person had actually read them, or it is just window decoration.
There are rental bookshelves available for decorative or studio purposes actually, which are purely put together to give the impression of erudition. When doing scholarly photoshoots, posing in front of the office bookshelf is a common choice.
Just for laughs, I used a photo of a bookshelf as my zoom background for a while.
Haha...I often don't pay attention to the interview itself and spend the entire time bothering my wife with questions like, 'I wonder why they picked that book/picture/background?'
They are decorations. Very common for lawyers and finance pros to have similar styles for sales purposes.
Elons brand isn’t really being a historian or an academic guy. I don’t think he reads and I don’t think he pretends to. Just focus on the projects.
> I don’t think he reads
I've read that he's read "Rocketeers" by Belfiore, along with "Rocket Propulsion Elements" and "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics".
I have all three. The latter two are very non-trivial.
Musk is extremely well informed about technology. The idea that he doesn't read is not compelling.
> Musk is extremely well informed about technology
Yes. That’s different than reading. I’m not ascribing moral value either way.
One doesn't become well-informed without reading.
I recall debating a historical point with a person who would send me cites in the form of TikTok clips. Coincidentally, I have two entire books on the subject, by two accomplished historians. Both books demolished all of his points.
Just for fun, compare a transcript of the movie "Oppenheimer" with the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". You're looking at a transcript of the movie of a few pages vs a 750 page small print tome. There's no way "Oppenheimer" makes one well informed about the Manhattan Project.
If you are arguing reading books is the only way someone can learn about a topic I disagree.
I wonder what's on Jeff Bezos' bookshelf. He leans more into the history.
https://www.bezosexpeditions.com/updates.html
The cost for universities is the librarians, (and journal subscriptions?) not the books.
Think of what a librarian could be today in the context of LLMs — there are completely different ways of accessing and organizing information — ways that will continually evolve in next few years.
In Europe it is legal to scan library books and use the contents with ML, per EU directive.
Even back in 2004 University libraries were under-utilized. I can only imagine they now look like ghost towns.
In 201X in at university they were used, but mostly as study areas.
Still the case in 2025, at least at all the universities I frequent.
I like reading through the oldest books in the collections and ones related to my field / hobbies, but other than that, I don't know of anyone who actually checks out books from the archives.
They've essentially become glorified quiet lobby areas that off-campus commuters use as a common space between classes.
> But it's hard to argue University libraries aren't mostly study areas
That's fine. For good study areas, you end up with a lot of dead space, anyway, which might as well be filled with books.
What sucks is libraries that are both passively and actively hostile to people trying to read and study.
I have often heard this described as a change in how people of different generations access information. Younger people today are used to using search bars to find what they need immediately [1], but older people like myself grew up used to it taking time to find relevant information, and often had to organize the information ourselves. Younger people aren't using the library because from their perspective, information is just available everywhere and immediately available on top of that. From their perspective, there simply is not need to go to the library if you can find what you need immediately.
I personally think it is horrible that many universities are selling their physical collections, but I just want to post some reasoning as to why there is a shift in usage. As a researcher, I think that being able to get an immediate answer is often great, but the problem is that it prevents you from exploring the information more deeply and broadly. It gives you a false sense of finality that doesn't require you to question what you are reading more closely or more broadly by examining many sources (like the neighboring books on a library shelf). And when you are doing deep research, that really is a skill you need.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
Perhaps it’s changed, but my experience is that most information just isn’t available online.
Eg, UW had microfiche and book collections of many periodicals going back to the 1800s, which I haven’t seen a digitized version of. By contrast, I often have trouble finding a digital article I know I read a few years ago.
Similarly, specialty libraries like the math library that had many out of print books — many of which were relevant to my own work.
I actually agree with you completely. That is why I emphasized that I was just giving their perspective. I don't think most information is available online, let alone available online immediately.
I've even had the same experience with you even it comes to microfiche in university collections. For my PhD, I had to request a lot of older government research reports from the 1970s and 1980s. None of it was online, but a lot of it was available on microfiche. I'd request a box with a range of report numbers, wait a few days for it to come to the reading room, and then go into the reading room to read and maybe scan the report if it was relevant. And often the specific report I wanted would not be in the box when I got there, since I only knew what ranges of reports were available, not which individual report was available. I'll note again that this is a much slower process, taking days to find one relevant bit of information, but that doesn't mean it is not valuable or necessary. I've found a lot of interesting information that way, and none of it was available online at the time.
I absolutely believe it, but it feels so crazy as the libraries, both as a student and as a community member at various points, for the local universities are by far the most useful and important resource they provide.
> students are reading much less than they used to
Yup. Having the last word is to post an excerpt from a book. Wikipedia doesn't hold a candle to a real history book.
In Zürich the central library is crammed with students. Sometimes it’s hard to find a spot to sit down to study.
But are they reading books? At the college campus here, there are many students in the library, but the proportion that are reading books there seems to have gone down over time.
You can check out books from the library and read them anywhere. Why do students need to read them in the library? If you are conducting certain research you need books as not everything is digitally available. Granted, most students are not doing this kind of thorough research.
That's true, but are they checking out books? :-) I just mean that from what I've seen, young people use libraries as a study space at least as much as they use them to obtain books (either for on-premises readng or for checkout).
>Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.
>---Anne Herbert, _The Next Whole Earth Catalog_ (1980), p 331.
I know someone who works at a public library in a small city. A lot of their work is "managing" homeless, mentally ill, and drug addicted customers who are attracted by shelter and free computers and internet.
I don't particularly have a problem with public funds going toward that, but I don't think library staff are trained or signed up for that work, or that libraries are an appropriate and cost effective way to help these people.
I don't think libraries should be sacred. They're nice to look at and nostalgic, but are increasingly anachronisms. Specialized facilities for higher education and historical research I can see still having some use, perhaps small school libraries, but the average public library not so much. They use a lot of space, a lot of floor space for books, requires staffing.
I think the article linked is saying that libraries should be sacred _because_ they are nice to be in. They make people feel better about their life and the world based on some seemingly rigorous survey results.
IMO the mindset that everything everything has to be optimized to not use up “too much floor space” if it presumably doesn’t return enough measurable value is the kind of mentality that causes societal issues that we need nice libraries to counteract.
> I think the article linked is saying that libraries should be sacred _because_ they are nice to be in.
Yeah, and I'm saying they shouldn't be.
> They make people feel better about their life and the world based on some seemingly rigorous survey results.
> IMO the mindset that everything everything has to be optimized to not use up “too much floor space” if it presumably doesn’t return enough measurable value is the kind of mentality that causes societal issues that we need nice libraries to counteract.
It's not that it's too much floor space, it's that it costs too much for the benefit it provides. With government expenditure in western countries approaching or even exceeding 40% of GDP with no sign of slowing and social problems that seem to be worse than ever in some cases, I would say that efficiency of government service delivery is critically important. It's not even hyper optimizing, just basic optimizing would be nice.
I get your point and posit thus: What about National Parks? Should they be sacred or should they too be butchered for 'floor space'? Large organized spaces relieve cognitive load, remove subconscious restrictions that we impose on ourselves and expand the mind. With no limits placed on the eye, the limits on the spirit dissolve as well. Nothing feels impossible. If this is not worth pursuing 'at all costs', if even this is subject to 'optimization', if unshackling of the intellect is 'not sacred': then let's begin with reclaiming land occupied by the Hagia Sophia and La Sagrada Familia.
No I don't think national parks should be sacred, but I don't think they or public libraries should "be butchered for 'floor space'". I think options should always be measured and considered.
If we are measuring the cost of libraries is a drop in the bucket relative to national debt and GDP. The immeasurable benefit they provide to communities is so worth their tiny relative cost.
Libraries aren't sacred to begin with. They're not like cows in India (if not in reality, then proverbially), popping up wherever they please, and nobody can do anything about it. Oh well, had this nice business here, but then someone opened a library, and since they are sacred, we had to move. That's not the situation.
Libraries taking up too much floor space doesn't mean much, since so does anything else. At the same time, they and all other things also take up too little floor space, since "taking up floor space" by itself doesn't really mean anything I can discern. Libraries are unique, and valuable; what other unique and valuable thing does their existence prevent?
To measure things you need at least two things. Maybe even three: an object to measure, a scale or another object to compare to, and some sort of heuristic as to what the result might mean (for you). It's pointless to say that it doesn't satisfy your standards of "usefulness" or what exactly your concern is, if you don't share those standards.
I'm not sure what comment you are actually attempting to address.
it applies to everything downstream from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42861038
> It's not that it's too much floor space, it's that it costs too much for the benefit it provides.
It costs way less than Facebook or a server farm full of GPT instances and provides more benefit and less harm. Our society has really warped the notion of what appropriate costs and benefits are.
You have a really warped notion of appropriate public service delivery if you think the only options are public libraries or "Facebook" or a server farm full of GPT instances. But I don't think your comment was in good faith, perhaps because you are incapable of actually addressing what I wrote.
I didn't say those were the only options.
What you wrote is that a library "costs too much for the benefit it provides". What I'm saying is that there are many other things we currently pay more for that provide even less benefit, so in relative terms libraries are quite far down the list of expenses to be worried about.
You certainly implied they were the only two options, and you did not say anything remotely suggesting you were talking about other things that are more wasteful! You're just making all that up now.
Anyway the topic is libraries. I did not say that no other things should be examined for their value for money, I was just talking about libraries. And the government sure should make good spending decisions on everything they spend money on! What kind of suggestion is that??
> It's not even hyper optimizing, just basic optimizing would be nice.
It feels a little bit like hyper optimizing. According to [0], the US spent $14.6B on libraries in 2020. The vast majority of that was from local municipalities, with state funding accounting for ~$1B and federal funding only $80M (disclaimer: I have not put any effort into verifying these numbers). It seems like our time would be better spent optimizing larger, more expensive programs before really pushing to make improvements here.
[0] https://wordsrated.com/library-funding-statistics/
"better spent optimizing larger, more expensive programs" such as?
Assuming the numbers I linked above are correct or at least in the ballpark:
At the federal level, pretty much anything else, since it’s already not really spending any money on libraries, relatively speaking.
At the state/local level, it’s harder to say since there are many more administrative units involved, each with their own budget and operating model. (This also makes it hard to optimize in general, since you’d have to apply the optimizations independently across many polities.)
If I use my city as an example, library funding is 5% of the city budget. The state provides no funding to any library, so this is the entire amount the libraries get. It’s the second smallest spend by category as the city tracks such things —- though there is an “other” category that represents 10% of the budget. The bulk of the spending is on police (23%), fire (17%), and public works (11%). Obviously these are also critical services (basically everything in the city budget is!), so it’s not easy to do cost cutting there either, but there’s proportionally more room for improvement.
Data have shown time and time again that for every dollar spent on a public library the community return on investment is four $4 dollars. Public libraries are more efficient and effective the more they are used. The more a book is checked out the more people have enjoyed it or learned from it. Also, where else can you go without being forced to spend money? A lot of people can't afford these materials, just like they could not afford to pay for their own security (police) or put out fires by paying for private firefighters. Also, most libraries make up less than 5% of their municipal budgets, often closer to 1% in big cities. Seems like a good investment to me.
I agree with you that librarians have a very hard job. I also think from a budgeting standpoint that public libraries overspend on best sellers, but that’s a different comment. Hah.
> I don't think libraries should be sacred.
An old business partner used to ask, “what dies first, democracy or the library?”
Libraries represent democracy and the free flow of information. Their analog nature makes them much harder to turn off or alter than a website. It’s no surprise the new admin called book bans “hoaxes” so they can continue. I fear we may learn the answer to my friend’s question.
Homeless people go to libraries because libraries are the only public space left that hasn't been commodified and commercialized. Killing them in the name of even higher profits is not a solution.
The really small towns around here have the library in the same building as the community center and police station.
Seems to help somewhat.
Homeless people are still people. The public library is one of the few places they are allowed without being judged. Yes, there are mental health issues and libraries are not meant to "manage" them. However, providing a means for no-cost life-long learning for everyone is essential to their mission. The idea of the public library you have is outdated. Try visiting your local library and see how they have changed.
don't forget free power outlets to charge their devices.
One thing we have at the local library which I'm surprised hasn't caught on more broadly is a maker space. They teach classes and once you've taken them you can us things like sewing machines, 3D printers/scanners, laser cutters, CNC machines etc (https://ppld.assabetinteractive.com/library-of-things/by-obj...).
The basement of our local library is a maker space, with a lot of that same equipment (maybe not CNC machines, but they have embroidery machines, silhouette cutters, 3d printers, laser cutters, etc), and also has sound rooms for recording podcasts or music.
I also found out last year they have an extensive manga collection (multiple shelves in both the teen and adult areas), so I've been taking advantage of that to read thousands of dollars worth of manga for free (I've bought copies of a few favorites afterwards, though).
My library has one, but it's only open for 1 hour a week, which is a shame because most 3d prints take longer than that
1 hour? How do you even justify getting equipment if you don't intend for it to be used?
Those machines will be obsolete before they have been used the equivalent of 2 days.
This is an excellent point. I wonder if its because of noise restrictions or just no budget to retrofit things ? It certainly is a logical next step
Many do. It's a great upgrade!
that's pretty awesome and very useful!
Libraries are the secret weapon of the truly excellent.
My late art foundation director friend would occasionally write art theory and critiques for books and curatorial pieces, and I remember wondering how he was able to get across so many references and so much material to write so eloquently?
Of course he'd been working since the 70's, but it wasn't till I set foot in a public library that I was like "Aha... surely this was his secret weapon.".
The thing I miss most about physical libraries is the serendipity of finding a book in the stacks which I would never have run across otherwise.
Online access has so many advantages, but I can't shake the feeling that it traps me within the web of my existing associations.
Agreed. I mean, this applies to various kinds of things, not just libraries: there used to be many more retail stores of various kinds (record stores, video rental shops, hobby stores, whatever) where you could browse and encounter things you hadn't intended or expected to encounter.
I was thinking of record stores as well. I spent so much of my life in those. Now on the rare occasion when I go into one, I have the uncanny sense of being back in the distant past, or back in a dream I had mostly woken up from.
I've found myself going to thrift stores a lot more these days than I used to because they're among the dwindling number of places left where there's still that experience of browsing and frequently seeing stuff you didn't expect to see.
Powell's in Portland, Oregon is pretty amazing for precisely this reason, if you ever get a chance to go.
It sure is!
Definitely experienced this in the Los Altos public library - one of my favorites. Combing through a stack and really feeling that a librarian's mind had placed these particular groupings together.
Was it Benjamin Franklin who established the public library system in the US? I think it was one of the greatest achievements in civilization. Every town in the US has a nice library for people to relax and to immerse themselves in knowledge or in an beautiful imaginary world.
Andrew Carnegie basically invented the public library system as we know it in the USA. He built a library in like every town. Thousands of them, I think.
He credited reading books for his success and passed the privilege to everyone else.
Well, largish town in the northeast for the most part.
When my family moved to the rural county in Virginia my father chose to retire to, the county "library" was a metal carrel of used paperbacks in one corner of the basement of the old Courthouse, open two afternoons a week, staffed by a volunteers from a local ladies auxiliary --- it took almost 3 decades of fund-raising before they were able to build a library on a small plot of land donated by the local school system.
And what's noble is that they did it right? People spent three decades just to improve the town, sounds pretty good to me.
That was my point --- Carnegie wasn't doing this alone.
I'd invite you to reconsider the geographic scope and distribution of Carnegie libraries. They were not mostly "largish towns in the northeast".
Here's a list of all Carnegie Libraries in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_...
Here are the lists for the rest of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library#Lists_of_Carn...
Yeah, but if you look at this list from the perspective of a kid in rural Virginia in the mid-70s --- there were only six in the state, two of them in a city on the coast, and three were academic libraries which were a long ways away, and not within the realm of possibility of visiting and most of them were already closed (only one is still operating as a library).
Didn't get to the nearby college library until a class trip for my senior paper --- in addition to the research for that, checked out a copy of Knuth's _TeX and METAFONT_ which changed the course of my life.
And the one in DC is now an Apple Store.
https://www.apple.com/retail/carnegielibrary/
According to [1], it started with Franklin:
In addition to membership libraries, Benjamin Franklin also played a role in the development of the first lending library. In 1790, Franklin donated a collection of books to a Massachusetts town that named itself after him. Though the town asked Franklin to donate a bell, he determined that "sense" was more important than "sound." Franklin residents voted for those donated books to be freely available for town members, creating the nation's first public library.
[1] https://dp.la/exhibitions/history-us-public-libraries/beginn...
Andrew Carnegie helped establish a whole bunch of public libraries across the US. He's probably the only reason every town has one.
I enjoyed many library programs growing up. But my local library now is a homeless shelter and pornography rental. Luckily they have a separate area for kids, but even then it's not a place I want to leave my 4 year old outside of a 10ft radius.
It's just unfortunate that every public facility becomes an overflow for super-users, instead of addressing their needs directly.
I highly recommend Klinenberg's Palaces for the People, which he named after Carnegie's phrase for libraries. Here's an interview he did on 99% Invisible:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-peopl...
I wonder what reasons caused commercial libraries to be easily accessible in my home town of Chennai but the general viewpoint in my now home of San Francisco is that they can't exist. I suppose the biggest differences are cost of materials, cost of labour, and land use requirements.
Libraries do naturally arise from the first-sale doctrine here. I think they would not exist in SF but perhaps Walnut Creek etc would have some.
Commercial libraries = private library where you pay a membership fee? I’ve not really heard of that here outside of arguably university libraries and similar.
But SF public library has a couple dozen branches or more?
The Mechanics’ Institute in SF is a “historic membership library”, for one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanics%27_Institute,_San_Fr...
A lovely place
Yes. I had a membership for years. The place looks 19th century, which it is. There are multiple levels of stacks over two floors, carved dark wood, comfy chairs, and librarians who scold anyone who talks.
Members can go there, plug in a laptop, and type. Quietly. It's never crowded.
It's a well-curated, library. It's most useful if you want historical information about 19th and early 20th century technology. They have a complete bound set of Popular Mechanics, from the days when it was a serious technical publication. The multi-volume engineering study for the Panama Canal, with drawings, is there. Current offerings are well chosen and updated regularly.
Came here to mention this -- private libraries are a thing in the US, but tend to not be heavily promoted, and there aren't many of them.
British council libraries have membership fees, at least in India https://www.britishcouncil.in/library/prices-and-plans
Yes, the one I went to as a child had a monthly fee and a per-book fee. It had a far more extensive collection than the SFPL library at 4th and Berry in a much more compact space. Most SFPL libraries appear to be homeless-support centers, which diminishes their capacity to carry books since they assign greater room to support functions. But perhaps that is the source of the value observed in the OP.
As an aside, are there university libraries one can join directly for a fee? I was under the impression they were bundled in with tuition etc. If it’s around $100/month I wouldn’t mind that, but perhaps that is an unachievable target.
> As an aside, are there university libraries one can join directly for a fee?
There are. Some are more open than others, but it generally comes down to "give $$, get access".
Here's Stanford's page, for example: https://library.stanford.edu/about-stanford-libraries/visit-...:
One thing worth noting, these accesses do not always include access to electronic resources. Access may only be available from computers that are in the library.
At least the one near me — and it’s only $100/yr.
https://lib.uw.edu/services/borrow/card/fee/
Me neither.
Personally I've never heard of or been to any commercial library before, perhaps it's really good startup idea with internal coffee shop (library first, cafeteria second).
I've been to coffee and books cafe (basically cafeteria first, library second) in France and normally it's full during the day (close at 7 pm).
In the US, there are some private archives. And university libraries with varying degrees of public access somewhat depending upon the degree that you can walk in and look like you belong. But real public libraries don't generally have a lot of restrictions.
I’m extremely confused. SF has many libraries and I go to them.
Yes, but almost none are commercial libraries.
San Francisco Public Library has an annual budget of $200 million, i.e. around $20/month per SF resident (including seniors and newborns).
Only 15% of that is spent on books and ebooks.
So perhaps the public libraries are serving most people well enough?
Because government-run free libraries squeeze out any profit-making possibility.
Thankfully.
Can you imagine a modern for-profit library?
Pay fees for access. Pay more fees to "skip the queue" for reserving books. Enjoy ads on your mandatory library app AND in your paid-for library space.
Yeeesh. No thanks. A modern public library is a simple reminder that we CAN have good things.
In asian countries there are plenty of comic cafes (manga/manhwa/manhua) that charge entry fees and provide amenities to read them.
Blockbuster and other video rental places were basically pay-per-use libraries, but not with an area to consume the media.
And they'll sell your reading habit information. And since it'd be commercial the "pen register" jurisprudence applies meaning that the government can use it to put you on a list. This last point is prevented for public libraries because being part of the government they're bound from gathering that kind of information under the first amendment.
These exist -- see the Mechanics Library in San Francisco. I haven't been there in a while, but it's not as bleak as you suggest. It isn't so different from many public libraries, except less busy and quieter.
I think many private libraries like Mechanics are nonprofits and aren't primarily funded by membership dues, so have little incentive to engage in dark patterns like this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanics%27_Institute,_San_...
It wouldn't be hard to imagine paying a not for profit institution directly instead of via taxes. Then its funding would be unaffected by political vagaries, as it would be funded by people's choice.
Because libraries are often used by the people who can least afford it. They offer resume classes, ESL, computer literacy, some will even have collections of clothes that can be borrowed for job interviews. Libraries should be a public service, not a private institution.
I understand what libraries do, but one doesn't preclude the other. Not for profits and charities are basically a one-way funnel of money from people who have it to people who don't, modulo not for profit salaries.
It sounds dismal. In an economic downturn the funding would dry up when people need it most.
I don't see people cancelling their Netflix subscriptions in a downturn; quite the opposite. Libraries could give very good value for money.
I was referring to large grants from wealthy donors, which is how nonprofits operate. To be entirely revenue funded a library would have to charge gym membership prices. I don’t see people going for it.
Netflix was still pretty niche in 2009. You’ve got a lot of poor friends? Who were movie buffs?
My comment wasn't particularly limited to 2009.
Legal, reader-friendly digital public libraries are likely to remain very difficult (if not impossible) to create without copyright reform, such as first-sale doctrine for ebooks.
So, like, Kindle?
No, Kindle with Special Offers (aka mandatory ads).
At first I thought the title was about _software libraries_.
And I wasn't so sure the answer to that could be definitive!
Thank you—I came here ready to complain about dependencies. haha
I love libraries and the huge benefit to society (especially low income individuals) libraries provide, but my biggest frustration is the lack of spaces to take video calls (personal or work) and the early hours they close. It would be nice for libraries to be available past 6pm for those that work a regular 9-5.
For example, to my knowledge, there's not a single place reasonably convenient in NY Bryant Park library or Stavros Foundation library where I can take video calls. In more suburban cities I frequent, the hours are often 9-5 with a Sunday operating 1-5pm.
It also frustrates me so much that coffee shops (establishments expecting purchases to stay) function more conveniently than libraries as a place I can sit down and work.
I've done video calls from the roof of Stavros Foundation Library, but that's weather dependent.
Actually, now that I think of it, I've also done at least one video call from the halls of the Stephen A. Schwarzman research branch across the street. Granted, these are not dedicated co-working spaces where you can make any noise you wish, but some calls are possible.
Apparently Zuckerbucks has spent more, infation-adjusted, on GPUs for "AI" than Carnegie spent on libraries and, inflation-adjusted, Carnegie was wealthier than Schmuckerberg.
As for Meta's effect on "well-being", that is a question left for the reader.
A new library branch, the first new one in the Brooklyn system in over 30 years, opened on the ground floor of my building. It's been the biggest quality of life boost I ever remember experiencing that didn't involve a move. The librarians know me by name because I put so many board games on hold.
Libraries in NYC during winter time are mostly daycare to keep homeless people warm.
I suppose this explains why those of us with families with large personal libraries have such good results in our children.
I suspect being able to afford a large personal library is a stronger signal than the books themselves.
They didn't measure the values before and after visiting the library so it's useless. "People who enjoy libraries also report enjoying libraries"
libc has always been all things to all people.
Not to undermine the study but if you ask regular users of anything, you’ll probably find that they like it, no?
Eh, probably not.
Hm so they just asked people that go to libraries if they like libraries? Seems silly to waste your time with such questions
You have a very strange idea of wasting time.
If I want to survey the effectiveness of Post Office in the era of Internet (email, messenger, etc), I'd definitely interview mainly the visitors to the Post office to check their their purposes, experiences and activities there. For example, you'll probably find someone posting a postcard inside the post office since that someone is probably a visiting tourist.
Why wouldn't you sample a random set of potential post office users?
If you wanted to know what parents think of public schools, would you survey only the parents who currently send their kids there, or would it also be informative to know the opinions of the parents whose children educated elsewhere?
It would depend on what type of data you're collecting. If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are worthless, you need to talk to people who've spent actual time with it. If you're looking to get impressions of a service, then sure, ask anyone and everyone.
Just because someone doesn't currently use X, it doesn't mean they've never used X.
And even if someone has never used X, it doesn't mean they haven't done extensive research about X, before concluding X doesn't meet their quality bar.
Before deciding whether to send my son to an SFUSD school, I had a call with the principal of the school and asked questions specific to my son's situation. Do you think my conclusions are worthless for understanding the quality of the service?
Not useless by any means, but if given the choice between somebody who interviewed the principal and a somebody else who's son actually attends, I'd prefer the latter every time. Wouldn't you?
Also, while I get your point, you're in the very unique position of informed non-users. That's a valuable category if you can access it, but it's the most difficult. (How can you determine which library non-attendants have done their research?)
"If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are worthless"
Not every time, no. You seem to be suggesting that no single informed non-user could be more useful than the least useful user.Sure, allow me to amend:
"If you're looking to understand the quality of a service, non-users are essentially worthless."
I'm suggesting that, in absence of some out-of-band signaling mechanism, the expectation value for usefulness of individual feedback is orders of magnitude greater for users than non-users.
Put differently, if I happened to be interested in this SFUSD school as well, is there some list of people like you I should interview?
If you got to the post office to find out about people's experience, your sample will be biased: you will mostly be interviewing people who use the post office much more often than the median post office user.
I go to the post office 1-2 times per year. People like me will be both:
- underrepresented in your sample, and
- be the least likely to have adapted to any difficulties getting to know how the post office works
Some folks who are heavy users of parcel services will have stopped using the post office completely. They will be totally unrepresented in your sample, even though you'd like to know why they use UPS instead of USPS.
I do see your point and agree it can be valuable data. What I'm arguing is specifically that the economics of it are extremely unfavorable.
Having a relevant Facebook group is about the best case scenario. I guess email might work? Maybe letters? I can't imagine calling or canvasing.
On top of all that I still think the data from actual users is still going to be more valuable overall, even the negative stuff. I'd prefer somebody who attended the school and had a bad experience than somebody who had a bad impression and went elsewhere.
But... I'll agree it's not worthless. It just strongly depends on the type of data you want to collect. For impressions and onboarding, it's a different story. Here's the goal of this study:
> NYPL regularly surveys its patrons to understand and improve how the Library fits into—and adds value to—their lives. We strive to identify the unique power of public libraries, pinpointing precise mechanisms of positive impact, so that we can preserve and strengthen that impact.
If you were to survey people in a place where the library mainly serves as shelter for people without homes, you would conclude that the most important thing is that, and there's no point maintaining collections of books.
If you believe that public libraries serve some purpose, you have to start with that, rather than just using gradient descent to get to somewhere. Otherwise why wouldn't libraries evolve into hospitals, or podcast studios, or brothels?
Post office visits are compelled by other business, like taxation.
There's probably still a signal there. Or do you think asking people if they like the internet would produce the same results?
At least it's probably replicable
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Groundbreaking research reveals people surveyed report that they like it when you give them things for free.
I love libraries. But this "research" is silly.
I actually agree with the article, but this piece feels like a conflict of interest — a library conducting research on how libraries improve everything.
Maybe it's hard to justify studying the positive affects of libraries (and third spaces generally) within a community to a non-library inclined audience.
Anecdote: While chronically underfunded to a overwhelming degree, local libraries and their staff in my area have consistently stepped up to the plate by trying to support the communities. Most notably when schools around here stopped offering any sort of afterschool/enrichment programing internally for kids, the libraries basically just added to their model.
What if you simply inform the non-library inclined audience of the context you shared in your anecdote?
Doesn't that provide sufficient foundation for a more even evaluation?