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Comment by romaniv | Hacker News Reader

This is a very important point. Libraries do more than just lend books. They are institutions that preserve and promote knowledge and have certain values "built in". They also often serve as local community centers of sorts. Having cheap books available in Kindle store does not fully replace functionality of a library.

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A newspaper interviewed a local librarian. The interviewer pointed out a lot of people use the free wifi from the parking lot after hours, and asked if that was a problem.

"That's the whole point."

I've conducted many interviews from such parking lots. I would completely use the library more if they didn't block non-443 ports (though it's understandable that they do).

Yeah, the guy who wrote the original article(that this piece responds to) had obviously never set foot in a library, because he still thinks of them as repositories of books. That's a function but it's not the main function.

When I lived in a semi-rural area as a teenager the library was one of the few places me and my geeky friends could congregate for hours. They would let us reserve meeting rooms so we could play games together. If that library hadn't been there we would have had no third place.

Not to mention that libraries have curated collections, which unlike the Kindle store are not filled with bot-generated scammer garbage: http://davidgaughran.com/2017/06/03/amazon-has-a-fake-book-p...

> They also often serve as local community centers of sorts.

The public libraries in Seattle are an amazing thing. My wife goes to "kids play time" with our ten month old son at a couple of different libraries every week. And we can also bring him in to the kids play area any time and take the kids area books on the honor system. It's a really great way to interact with other kids until we start using day care or he gets to preschool age. And it gives my wife a chance to meet other parents and get a break.

I used to go to Bellevue Library every single weekend because my wife used to work around there. Just being able to randomly fall upon an old book was great. The atmosphere, a sense of community, a nice park besides. A library is a lot more than a collection of books.

I'm so damn glad King county does a good job maintaining the community libraries.

The Capitol Hill branch of Seattle Public Libraries was the first Library I had been to in probably 20 years and I fell in love with the entire system. It made me read much more than I was in the past and the free events and learning they have are amazing. It is an enormous benefit to the citizens of the city, as well as the low income/poor who can charge their cell phones or use the internet so they can keep up with potential employers who may call them or send them emails, as well as look for jobs or complete online applications (as well as many more things).

They also provide a free subscription to Lynda with your library card.

Cool! Didn't know about Lynda.

You can also get free tickets to a lot of local museums: https://www.spl.org/programs-and-services/arts-and-culture/m...

If you haven't checked out the Living Computer Museum down in SoDo, it's an absolute MUST. SPL provides free tickets to it :)

Agreed - besides obviously checking out books, my kids (8 & 10) do a range of activities (all free to attend) at our local library - they’ve done a creative writing workshop, a science workshop, an arts & crafts session, attended a biodiversity talk and will shortly do a couple of sessions to make a stop motion animation - and that’s just in the past two months. They also often see class mates there, which adds to the social aspect of development outside of a school context.

They serve as community centers 100%. Storytelling nights, after-school clubs, classes, dances, voter registration and voting booths... I am sure I am only grazing the surface of how libraries operate as community centers.

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