Summary is: private company is taking over library operations in many towns, and cutting salaries and pensions, because of budgetary issues. Many people are outraged by this idea.
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.”
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.
but ultimately they're under contract from the city/county to provide library services? It's not like they can unilaterally add user charges. They still can if the city/county agrees, but that's still the case in the case of publicly run libraries.
Private schools are far superior to public schools and often cost far less. Private prisons are almost a non issue - they're a minuscule amount. Take a look at what the California prison guard union does - advocating against criminal justice reform to maintain large # of inmates. I'm against private prisons, but don't let it crowd out the real issue which is public prisons.
Doesn't seem misleading to me, your summary ("It's about municipalities hiring private companies to staff the libraries and manage day to day operations.") aligns with my understanding of what "privatize libraries" means.
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?
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.
Seriously, the government don't get economies of scale?
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?
> Seriously, the government don't get economies of scale?
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.
> So, where is the profit in privatizing libraries unless access will no longer be for all, information will no longer be undistorted, etc?
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.
Most libraries have already fallen pretty far from their original mission. A lot of them are primarily free movie/video game rental facilities that also provide a place to use a computer and get on the Internet. The book-side is almost secondary now, and tends to have a massive recency bias combined with a general predilection for romance, mystery, and political novels.
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.
It'd be great if we could have privatized police forces, that the community chooses to pay for. It'd end all victimless crime enforcement/laws because no one would voluntarily pay for that.
This is the current sad state of America.
American Capitalism currently has the ability to pay for legislation to make it illegal to breathe air for free (Damn leftists and free breathing), then is ready to have the companies that paid for the legislation to charge you PAYG for breathing.
Horrible idea. One day your library card will require a monthly subscription fee which will then be steadily increased. Then they will start showing you advertisements in the library and then put advertisements in the books. Maybe even start using cameras or RFID to see what books you read and start using that data to sell you ads. It really is terrible what privatization does.
> Then they will start showing you advertisements in the library and then put advertisements in the books.
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?
You have to "prove" that you live within a geographic boundary to use library services beyond the basic "come inside, browse and read" - because all property within that boundary is paying taxes.
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.
My state has some of the best libraries in the world and the only requirement to get a library card is to reside in the state. That's a big geographic boundary. Once a person has the card, a lot of interlibrary loan and online borrowing possibilities exist.
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.
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.
Actually, libraries intentionally do not keep records of what books you've checked out for patron privacy reasons. It can be annoying, but it's a the right thing to do.
I'm not sure where you're located, but I find that hard to believe for the US. My library has an app which is obviously storing data about me on a server somewhere. They certainly know which books I have out now and which are overdue.
This is at least common in US libraries. The San Francisco public library as well as the library system where I grew up both do not keep library records after you have returned the item. I know there is a lot of contention about their private partners keeping records (ex: Overdrive) but I haven't followed that conversation much.
Source? I've heard of librarians fighting government agencies demanding access to their records, but it's pretty obvious that my local library keeps track of what I borrow.
This is literally just Librarians as a Service. I see almost nothing controversial here. Your taxes will still fund libraries, but Betty and Fred Slacker who have sapped tax dollars doing a whole lot of nothing will have to go. If you want your tax dollars to be put to better use you'd support this sort of thing. I wouldn't support the outright privatization of libraries, but also libraries are already prone to charging plenty of fees for library cards, late books, et cetera (which seems to be the fear here). Nothing will change on the side of the consumer.
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.
Geez lol - Hating on specifically lazy librarians I guess. It's nearly impossible to be fired as a librarian after 5 years where I'm from. That sort of policy removes all of the incentives to be "a good librarian". Surely there are good librarians, but if you don't have skin in the game you can be good at your leisure.
>Because giant companies have told us, oh no, you want to save the most money, you don’t actually want to spend money on anything. Everything that’s good is really cheap, which is, of course, really, really, really toxic.
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.
The article doesn't seem to touch on the homeless issue. Have any studies been done on how much public usage of the literary resources of a library have dropped since most libraries have morphed into defacto "safe places" for the homeless to stay during the day? Would a "private" library have less of this?
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.
Books are a platform for the author to express their ideas. Privatizing libraries will give libraries the power to control speech much like Facebook and Twitter since freedom of speech protects citizens from the government but not citizens from other private entities.
Looking at this from the POV of economic drivers. Libraries have become steadily marginalised by the decline of print media of all kinds. Libraries have to buy books to lend. They measure the times a book was accessed, and after a number of views/month, they no longer retain the book. I am sure you have seen the huge numbers of older books being re-cycled. They used to send old books to third world countries, but they have winnowed what they send as even third world countries started to refuse various old books. The University of Toronto culls their collection rigorously. This culling frees up storage space. Print books were permanent. Copyright laws have created limits on how many time an ebook can be lent. https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/books-video-music/downlo...
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
Libraries are generally controlled at a city or county level. So the people responsible are very accessible. Make it clear to them that you do not want this.
I guess on the one hand many libraries are underfunded by the state. Having private money come in to give them new life and make them a place people want to be, giving adults a place to learn/hang out, could be really great.
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!
The right way to get private money is to restore tax rates to sustainable levels, rolling back decades of cuts justified on debunked trickle-down economics theories. Public service has inherently different goals than a for-profit company and trying to pair the two almost always ends up costing more for worse service.
Exactly this. The libraries in my city are fantastic well-maintained places, but we pay fairly high (compared to the US at least) taxes for that privilege.
The sad thing is that we don’t really pay that much less in taxes once you factor in the cost of equivalent private healthcare. The top incomes are higher but, for example, a Danish friend noted that once you add up all levels of taxes & healthcare it’s within a percentage points of Denmark, but with lower quality of service due to all of the baked-in inefficiencies.
To play the devil’s advocate: there is no competitive market pressure to keep such public entities efficient. What if these libraries really are run horribly, by unaccountable, unfireable people?
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?”
If public libraries didn’t already exist, it would be impossible to create them now. Huge amounts of money would be poured into opposing such an anti capitalist idea. The Overton window has shifted way to the right when it comes to creating common spaces or public resources. The mantra today is enclose and privatize, monopolize and monetize.
Public libraries in the US were primarily created due to funding from Andrew Carnegie, after he got filthy rich off steel. Whether out of pure altruism, or to assuage his guilt at getting so rich through cutthroat business dealings, or as a PR campaign, it was capitalism that created the modern library system. Just like what our contemporary billionaires do once they're filthy rich (Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.).
You could say that Carnegie substantially expanded the number of public libraries but it sounds odd to say “created” about something with centuries of precedent just in North America.
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.
I'm not arguing in favor of privatizing libraries. Carnegie really is the single most important source of the US public library system, funding thousands of them across the country, with the modern equivalent of billions of dollars. He didn't invent the concept of public libraries, but it's not a stretch to say that he founded the modern US public library system.
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.
Libraries in my city (Łódź, Poland) are absolutely terrible. All they have are history books that remember the communist occupation and the cheapest popular novels.
Public libraries have nothing that I want. They have no good engineering books, they don't sell coffee, and they have to enforce every single government rule on the books. The reality is that they are government institutions, and this makes being inside them bad in the DMV kind of way.
"The reality is that they are government institutions, and this makes being inside them bad in the DMV kind of way."
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.
Scihub is an incredibly shitty public library because it is very limited in its duration (no childrens books) and it requires online access to be able to use (so no poors/infrastructure-impoverished/homeless allowed).
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.
Most of this is BS, but it is true that most public libraries have poor selection for technical books. You can often get them via intra library loan though (typically from college libraries), but that is less convenient.
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...