Bad news from Bookland
Two depressing stories:
- Boston Globe: Cuts put towns' libraries at risk on closings and cutbacks in Massachusetts. (I wrote the Northbridge people asking if they wanted a free low-rent OPAC.)
- CNN: Bookstore owner burns books in protest. Can't sell off 20,000 books, used bookstore owner starts burning them.
posted by Tim at 8:17 PM
4 Comments:
From the CNN article:"The idea of burning the books horrified Marcia Trayford, who paid $20 Sunday to carry away an armload of tomes on art, education and music."
Let's see here. The bookstore owner to lazy/cheap to do advertising campaign starts fire gets media attention sells books that he supposedly was going to burn to horrified consumers. PR stunt.
To bad about the libraries though.
I live in a rapidly growing, rapidly shifting town/city of 150,000. Our Main Library has become a 'second home' to the "day patient, Thorazine crowd" who otherwise roam aimlessly downtown. These folks sprawl across the study carrels, stink to high heaven, never read, and yet have carte blanche to ruin the ambience of our 100-plus-year-old library.
Those sections furthest away from the check-out desk reek of urine, for you see, stupidly, these "indigents" are not allowed to use the public restrooms, so they 'go' where they can. (They have pissed on every biography past LBJ.)
I'd simply like to suggest with this post that there may be more to these library closings in your area than meets the eye; I certainly am not going to donate another nickel to my own local library, which I no longer feel safe using, given that I need a complete anti-bacterial hosing after having been there.
I pity our two remaining librarians; in fact, I hope they've swiped every valuable volume and will make a killing listing them on eBay. No one signed up for the neglected, noisy, smelly, ill-stocked warehouses our public libraries have become, and I, for one, am not going to lament their demise, given how far they've strayed from their idyllic purpose and how aberrant is their existence now.
What test are you going to use to rid your library of its "element"? Psychological evaluation? Meds taken or not? Money in the bank? Odor? Fixed place of abode? I can't think of a single test that would hold up in court.
Deinstitutionalization of mental patients was an idea you probably supported in the Reagan era. Why should "they" get anything from the tax-and-spend state? Well, the chickens have come home to roost, and if you don't like it, you can work to change public policy. Better yet, why not build a psychosocial rehabilitation clubhouse in your own backyard? It would keep "them" out of the libraries.
Very sad. The situation is the same in the UK. The second-hand bookstore in my home town closed down when the owner retired. A website said I could find a second-hand bookstore in the town where I'm working at the moment, but it's nowhere to be seen.
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