A For-Profit Company Is Trying to Privatize as Many Public Libraries as They Can
fair.org
fair.org
The company (and cities) claim that they are reducing costs but keeping or improving service levels.
The referenced NYT article from 2010 mentions another town (Redding, CA) that has used this company and hasn’t really experienced problems.
Santa Clarita (subject in the NYT article) switched back to “local staffing” in 2018. [1] [2].
The city claimed it would be cheaper to run in house:
“ City documents also said a 2012 state law known as the Public Employee Pension Reform Act that reduced pension costs for new public employees allows for the city to afford staffing the library with city employees and save money.
A city council agenda report said the net cost estimate to operate the library in-house at the same staffing level as the LSSI contract, is $3,388,409, for estimated first-year savings of $393,931.”
[1] https://www.santaclaritalibrary.com/a-new-chapter-for-the-sa...
[2] https://signalscv.com/2018/01/council-unanimously-votes-take...
This isn't about making libraries private and charging money to take out books or whatever. It's about municipalities hiring private companies to staff the libraries and manage day to day operations. This is still a topic worth talking about! But it doesn't mean that these libraries aren't remaining free and open to the public.
For now.
Libraries are a service that We the People have decided are a good thing to provide free to everyone.
Books can be read for free, information should be accessible to all, and all entirely free from any distortions or restrictions caused by a profit motive or 'invested interests'.
So, where is the profit in privatizing libraries unless access will no longer be for all, information will no longer be undistorted, etc?
Yes.
> Libraries are a service that We the People have decided are a good thing to provide free to everyone
Yes. And any time there's a public good, there's a billionaire willing to advocate taking it away again so profit can be made from it.
It's like all those millions of acres of pristine, unlogged rainforest: it's just sitting there waiting to be turned into profit.
End stage capitalism is a thing.
There was a piece about privatizing the police and it had cops having exchanges like this [0]:
““Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge”
““Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.”
“I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.”
[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
Because you didn't read the article. They're a private company that runs libraries on behalf of municipalities. It's possible through economies of scale and not having to pay government salaries.
They do pay a decent wage though, unlike the subsistence level for-profit necessarily aims for.
This kind of 'on-behalf-of' scheme nearly always ends in the agent accumulating power, and abusing it for profit. That's particularly sensitive when it comes to information infrastructure. We expect Fox, Facebook, CNBC, etc to be garbage, but Libraries?
a county government running libraries for their own county doesn't operate on the same scale as corporation that runs libraries for dozens/hundreds of counties across the country.
The profit comes from squeezing money out of the staffers who will no longer be getting a salary, pension, benefits, etc. This same business approach has been used for decades in certain aspects of public education and other parts of the public sector, which is why public education and government in the United States are universally regarded as working really well. (ahem)
> So, where is the profit in privatizing libraries unless access will no longer be for all, information will no longer be undistorted, etc?
The libraries that are taking this approach are probably already pretty budget limited. The sad thing would be if it becomes a norm in some states because of political reasons.
Older books, even classics, even very rare books, are being "removed" from collections, almost always a euphemism for "destroyed." For example, in my large multi-county library system, there are a single digit number, total, of all the works of ancient Greece and Rome. Even the ILL network has a lot of holes in it. This was not the case a few decades ago - the library is how I was accidentally exposed to them and acquired a lifelong interest in ancient history. There are more copies of a single example of the hyped-up forgettable ideological fare that gets churned out and forgotten on an annual basis.
Typically when I bring this up, people tell me that it's all available online anyway. Sure, big-name classical works are. A lot of niche books (on narrow technical or scientific subjects, or local history, for example) are being lost forever. And accidental exposure to physical copies of books is a huge and important method of discovery.
So to be honest, I don't think libraries can get any worse. I honestly don't think most people understand the scale of the destruction going on right now.
All the books in my public library have RFID already to make them faster to check in and check out. I'm also pretty sure there's been a record of every book you've checked in and out of the library even predating that. Glad they don't already do this.
"The Library does not maintain a history of what a borrower has previously checked out once books and materials are returned on time."
Most libraries are relatively lax on the proof because they see it as a public service. But they don't have to be, and you would expect that a public library operated by a for-profit company will be far more strict than others.
I imagine a for-profit library would be largely frozen out of our interlibrary loan system and all the reciprocity involved in membership, but... maybe not? I don't know, but I suspect that this model of deprofessionalisation is going to be limited to libraries in small towns and municipalities.
I don't even doubt that they'd do this. Imagine trying to read something while some advertiser constantly tries to grab your attention. Is there a single place on this planet that's safe from advertisers?
ALSO: You have to consider whether YOUR public library is an above average PLS or not. I grew up with a great PLS, but in my current location it's abysmal and would likely benefit from this sort of service provider coming in.
This is the first time I've seen someone hate on librarians (that I can remember). The Internet reaches a new low...
This is a valuable quote discussing a prominent ideology in the US. Everyone is trying to save as much as possible while cutting corners that harm other parts of the system. Including people who work for the lowest wages having their income suppressed because we want to save a buck.
My personal take is that we should absolutely have and fund these places (and drastically more mental health care spending), but a library is not the right location for a homeless refuge.
Lower wages, eliminate benefits, make service decisions based on profit and not principle.
Note, publishers also charge 4-5 the hardcover price for ebooks AND limit the number of lends of the file.
There is a large and diverse ebook torrent ecology, where an ebook can be lent endlessly. Copyright owners monitor ebooks, and insert codes in their ebooks and if they find it on torrents, they know what library was the leaker(of course, it was not the library - it was one of their borrowers, so there is some thought about the library cutting off a particular borrower), so a growing money gather by copyright owners is underway at all levels to offset the lower sales of paper based books. It is clear now that the US and world copyright system needs correction - and then their lobbying will start. https://online.yu.edu/cardozo/blog/disney-influence-copyrigh...
Did you know that in the UK a library is not allowed to repair the binding on a book as it wears out with age? Look in UK books. You will seen a small paragraph stating you may only lend out a book in it's original binding. If it wears out = no repairs, no taped in pages, no rebinding etc. https://www.bl.uk/on-demand/pricing
There is also the PLR (public lending right) where the copyright holders and publishers receive grants that vary by country to assist in mitigating the 'losses' from lending. http://www.open-shelf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Public-L...
On the other hand, private money means that access will inevitably become inequitable.
Hopefully we can find a way to strike a good balance - I think giving people a forum to spend time learning/talking to others about what they've learned is about as good of an idea as they come!
From the article:
>Yeah, so the company goes in and says, look, your library is one of the things that’s sapping all of this money from your budget, and we can fix that for you. And we can increase your services. And then, of course, that is partially true, in terms of this company has a record of going into a public library, taking over management of it, and reducing the amount of money that the county has to spend, or the city has to spend. But all of that is on the backs of workers.
I do not know what the solution is. Money cannot be the only issue(e.g. the private entities are usually forced to agree to guarantee certain employee pay levels and benefits before taking over). People point to California, and SF in particular, and ask, where the hell is all the tax revenue going?
Progressives like Ezra Klein have accepted the problem, and are thinking about solutions:
“California Is Making Liberals Squirm If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/opinion/california-san-fr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-progr...
The key thing about the Carnegie libraries was that they were donations of the buildings but the local governments committed to maintenance, staffing, and operations. It’s true that the initial money came from a wealthy capitalist but that didn’t come with continued control or the expectation that the service be run at a profit, which seems relatively significant as a difference compared to a for-profit company operating library services.
Edit: I'm countering GP's claim that capitalism would prevent libraries from appearing today. There are plenty of privately-funded public-benefit institutions now, like the Gates Foundation and others, doing things that governments arguably ought to be doing but aren't.
Scihub is a much better public library.
This doesn't really make any sense. I've never had an issue with being in a library because it's "a government institution".
You can ask the librarians to get books for you.
Libraries provide more services than just loaning books, and they're particularly useful for people who don't have the money to spend on a coffee, or who don't own computers... Obviously they aren't as useful for engineers who have money.
The thing about a public library is its availability to service everyone for a wide variety of information. Scihub fails on pretty much every respect there, including the information.