Public libraries have become daycares for the homeless. A recent front page article in the Gazette waxed poetic about the sanctuary libraries provide for itinerants. The idyllic photograph of an prenebriated gentleman scholar was as inviting as a panhandler on the street corner actually. So, up for an afternoon at the library? Do you want to drop your kids off there and let them wander the shelves unsupervised? Followed by the odd mental-outpatient? Do you want them sharing desks and chairs surfaces with the quite less hygienic?
The public library is not for you and me anymore. And you know who doesn’t care? Barnes and Noble. Borders. I have a bookstore too, so I don’t care either.
The decay of the American library system plays right into the hands of bookstore owners. Let citizens buy their books. Let ’em buy their coffee while they hang out looking at books they have to BUY.
Those who can’t afford new books? Let them catch lice from the homeless. They’re about as good as a homeless person to the bottom line of the economy.
And let the libraries spend their budget on bestsellers and DVDs. Whatever the public wants. When they need something, a reference item, an item for their own personal edification or continued education, they’ll have to come to the book store!
The rest of the library crowd will be left reading dreck. Another base motive of the capitalists in charge. A healthy democracy requires an educated public.
And I’d like to be more clear. I do care. I’m in the used book business. We sell good books to people who read. Our customer base is not served by communities whose public libraries give them movies instead of books, bestsellers instead of good books. And no children are nurtured well if they grow up having to avoid the library.
Yes, that article stressed that the downtown library had homeless inside that were well behaved, and that has been my experience there, too. Usually the problem is in the bathrooms where homeless try to use the failities to clean up in. I have not seen the security hassle anybody downtown, nor have I seen anybody cleaning themself up inside the bathrooms.
Actually, the downtown library in this city is one of the best I have seen around the country. Denver’s library, in contrast, is not that good. In summer, they were closing the library at 6 PM, which is a disgrace! Why have a library if it is not open most of the time?
Eric, you touch on an issue that is quite sad. That is, the simple fact that nobody actually goes to the stacks anymore. And what can be located there is usually trash to a great extent. And it is even worse in the commercial big-box stores! But that is a huge topic in itself. People basically are not reading anymore. Not that they ever did read that much to begin with, but the stacks are pretty much abandoned these days.
I don’t mean to come down on the homeless nor the librarians. It’s the social programs we are eliminating which used to address or ameliorate the problems which put people out on the street.
Your writing is less than idyllic, it’s atrocious Eric, maybe you should spend more time in the library looking up word spellings before you post them!
You make a good point! I’ll meet you there and you can look up, punctuation.