As I previously said in a preceding blog, I have been a fan of libraries throughout my life. Growing up in Milwaukee I spent much time in the Finney and Villard neighborhood libraries as well as the small but useful library within Holy Redeemer School. When I was old enough to get out and about on my own, I took the public transit system to downtown and would wander the wonders of the downtown public library. This was when the museum was part of the building. Another place of wonder.
So I’ve established two things. I appreciate public libraries and public transportation. However, one thing I’ve learned through the years is that things change.
This weekend my grandson was doing homework for geography or sociology, whichever it is called now. His topic was Greece. Did he make a trip to the public library? Not when we have two computers in the house and Road Runner with a wireless router. Everything and more that he needed was just a matter of a few clicks of the mouse.
I believe that public libraries are still a necessity, but have become less important since the growth of the Internet. There are also some services that the libraries provide that I am amazed are even legal. To explore this, let’s go back to an Internet site called Napster.
For those not familiar, Napster is still around but started out as a site that provided free software that could search for music contained not on its site but on other peoples computers! The software would read music content of a person’s drive, with their permission, and people looking for some Frankie Vallee songs could download them from frankiefan123 or whoever. I will admit to nothing other than saying I thought it would great to get some scratch-free Herb Alpert music as I already have the albums in my closet with no record player to play them on since.
The music industry decided that this was a violation of copyrights and court action took place. The way I see it, sharing music and other intellectual material are the same. The reasoning is that you are depriving the author of their income. If this is so, then we have to look at other intellectual materials that we might be depriving someone of income.
I used to have a whole bunch of magazines stuffed into my mailbox. I decided to save the money and read them for free at the library. I saved money and the magazine lost money. See the parallel with the Napster service? I also see that the library has music to loan out as well as videos. And then there are the books themselves. I suppose some writers of books spend all the time writing them just to have one or two copies in each library across the country. However, here is another example of library Napsterism. In one of the free magazines that I was enjoying intellectual material from, one of my favorite writers advertised that he wrote a book. I wanted to read the book. But $29.95 plus tax and shipping and handling? I can wait until the library gets it and I can read it for free. However when this is done, the author may decide it is not worth the time to write any more books. Do you see something wrong here?No, I am not endorsing the wholesale abolishment of public libraries of even the rental of books and other material. Apparently it is legal, never mind the economic and moral side of it. What I am saying is that perhaps the library as we currently know it is more a source of community pride than it is a necessity.
There are certainly reference material that should be contained and made available to the public. Children cannot do all their research on the Internet. Flipping through the pages of research material while seated at a table often is much better education than clicking a mouse, and I realize that not all households have Inte
