http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57384046-93/so-how-much-is-a-fair-price-to-pay-for-an-e-book/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&tag=nl.e703

And, I was sort of excited to think I wasn’t the only rabid, er radical patron out there.

Still, I so value the thoughtfulness and consideration your experience brings to the issues … and am glad our paths have crossed online.

But I use my public library heavily, and in my current guise I am a patron. Most of the people there I used to know have retired, so for the current staff I’m just another citizen bozo on the bus.

I’ve had the same thought. Same thing with libraries on auto-pilot, purchasing and circulating whatever ‘popular’ material the publishers and aggregators want to put into the pipeline. Or spending public funds on computers that people use mostly for Facebook and other commercial endeavors. These are all examples of public funds being used to subsidize and promote commercial good in the guise of serving an arguable public good.

(They must have talked to the folks at the IRS. ;-> )

I’m not sure that they can. I know of one public library that has succeeded in significantly jacking up its circ stats by focusing on large numbers of copies of bestsellers and Hollywood movie DVDs. It works. It seems that’s what people want. And the library in question takes its impressive circ stats to city council to show just how well it is meeting the desires of its patrons.

But what happens when money gets really tight, and especially if the past three years are merely prelude to something much worse to come, as some believe? How high will providing entertainment rank in the priorities of a city government that is pushed to the wall?

Oddly, in such a scenario, the library would get more support if it had been providing resources for self-education and improvement, even though its patrons hadn’t been using them all that much.

In short, an “uplifting” mission is a better sell to funding agencies than an entertainment mission. I don’t know if handing out bestsellers and movies is something that can sustain libraries. Taxpayers and their representatives will wonder about funding free entertainment for the middle class when there is no apparent “higher” mission.

If libraries can somehow finesse the ebook issue, then there is the prospect of being able to operate elibraries “staffed” by book-recommending bots. No need for bricks and mortar at all, and for far fewer staff. For now, the stuff of science fiction…

And if ereaders and ebooks become cheap and ubiquitous, as I suspect they will, then all that may be needed is a subsidy — information access stamps, if you will — for the few remaining people on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Naturally, I have no clue as to how it will all actually play out. No one does.

But I just don’t see entertainment as a mission that will sell the idea of the library to its funders.

The 80/20 mindset (or a close approximation)and the collection practices I described in my reply to Mike exist in public libraries too, right?

Sounds like the universities and colleges have the problem with collection policies, not public libraries. After all, they have boatloads more of taxpayer money to spend on books that nobody reads…

Maybe I missed a new ALA campaign: Pick on Public Libraries by Academic Librarians Week!