Re: OT: Public libraries

On 23/04/2025 3:46 pm, Don Y wrote:

On 4/22/2025 10:01 PM, legg wrote:

On Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:40:29 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:
>

On 4/22/2025 1:43 PM, legg wrote:

One of the benefits of library computers is access to the

>
Yes, but one can access that from home (computer, phone).  Hence
my comment regarding storing books in "high cost" spaces instead
of "in a back room"; if the staff are the ones who will be
PICKING the books, then there is no need for the co$metic$ of
public stacks.
>

<snip>
>
Anything that requires home hardware or internet payments is shifting
the publicly costed structure onto the backs of a public that can not
always afford it.
>
It's the reason public libraries were developed by altruists
in the first place.

 But, by that reasoning, shouldn't healthcare, transportation,
potable water, food, education, etc. ALSO be "free" to those
populations?

In most advanced industrial countries health care is free. You don't want poor people to get sick and infect everybody else, so you bribe them to go into hospital when they are sick and infectious with free treatment when they are merely sick.
Potable water and food get charged for because if they are free people will waste them. Education is free because we want everybody to able to read and write, and those people who can learn to do more can do more for society if they are encourage to develop those extra skills.
The capacity to succeed in further education isn't all that predictable, and some people need to learn a lot of irrelevant stuff before they can work out what they are really good at. Win Hill dropped out of a Ph.D. program in chemical physics to move into a masters program in electronics, and I finished a Ph.D. in physical chemistry before fully moving into electronics.

Yet, you wouldn't want to shame them into admitting their *need*...

Primary and secondary education tends to be compulsory.

I've always seen the libraries as something that serves the ENTIRE
public, not just a portion thereof.

Some people are functionally illiterate, even if they can read and write and post here.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney