Everything Has a Cost
Young Bill Young here. Kitty’s been a bit under the weather, but she’s back. To help her catch-up (a sick day can be costly work wise!), I volunteered to helm the blog today.
To start off, you need to follow the link below to see the latest Webcomic Wednesday on Sadie’s extremely cool Extremely Graphic blog. Go check it out (add your comment, if you wish) and then meet me back here. K?
Are you back? Good!
What was *that* all about?! Is the Hi and Lois comic strip saying more people are using their libraries because the lousy economy is shuttering book stores? Or is it saying “free” library service is helping put bookstores out of business? (“Everything has a cost,” Lois tells her two tykes.) This comic seems so wrong in so many ways it’s hard to get my head around it. The comic may simply be a commentary on the current economic crisis, but if it is, it fails. Instead, it comes across as anti-library and anti-egalitarian.
More than anything, it makes me think about a conversation overhead at the Oklahoma State Capitol a few years ago. The gist of the conversation was that libraries hurt publishers and authors because fewer people buy books.
Libraries are bad for the economy? Bad for the book publishing business? Let’s look at a couple of facts:
• According to the 2009 Library and Book Trade Almanac (formerly Bowker’s Annual), public, academic, special and government libraries in the United States bought more than $400 million dollars worth of books during fiscal year 2007-2008. (And that figure doesn’t even include school libraries.) These libraries spent approximately $1.9 billion on all acquisitions, including magazine subscriptions, online resources, AV materials and other print resources. The truth is, libraries are a major customer for publishers and authors, and they remain champions of traditional print, even as they branch out to offer new formats and information technologies to citizens.
• Meanwhile, the Association of American Publishers estimates that U.S. publishers had net sales of $23.9 billion in 2009. Looking at it this way, it appears library sales are just a drop in the bucket. Sales to individuals and other types of institutions represent more than 98% of total book sales. (See how much fun you can have with statistics?)
And while we’re talking the economy, let’s not forget how often people use their library to hunt for jobs, fill-out online job applications, or to find information for their business or to start a new business.
More egregious is the idea that libraries are “free”, as the Hi and Lois comic strip suggests. Libraries are not free. They are paid for with tax dollars to provide a service for the common good. And this common good is best represented by this quote from James Madison:
A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Libraries are there to provide citizens this popular information when they can’t afford to buy a book or a newspaper subscription, or can’t afford home internet access. And they have librarians to help when they don’t know where to start looking for particular information. For all of this, libraries are among the most beloved of American institutions. And for all of this, we get a lame cartoon like this one.
In many ways, libraries are a radical institution to support a radial idea: namely that the common person can be in charge of his own destiny, that she can participate in government, and that the path toward this self-determination lies in access to information and knowledge. How many citizens would be left out of our participatory democracy if the open, non-judgmental, only-here-to-serve library was taken out of the equation? There would be a real cost to that scenario, and it’s a cost we simply cannot afford.
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Comments
I’m having the “perfect storm” of sinus congestion, but talk about annoying. Do you think maybe Amazon, or large bookstore chains may have more to do with putting the local book store under than libraries. I know libraries often work with Indie bookstores to promote book and author events. I think most of the people at their local bookstore are probably the same people that have library cards and use their library. I may be wrong but I don’t think we’re the enemy.
–A Librarian who buys books and checks them out too.
You’re absolutely right, Kitty. The Department of Libraries, the Oklahoma Center for the Book, local libraries and systems often work with local bookstores during author and literary events. The library makes sure books are available for purchase, the bookstore gets to rack up sales, and the patron goes home happy with books in hand.
You’re also on target about another thing: people who love to read often patronize both the library and the community bookstores. It’s not an either/or for most of us.
To Bill and Kitty…”Here, Here!”
Books and other related reading materials serve innumerable purposes, from entertainment to dispersal of information. Our options for obtaining access to those books, etc. are based upon many factors, not the least of which are the current 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and financial capability — may God protect both!
An individual’s use of and need for books and other reading materials is entirely subjective. Some are able to purchase books at will. However, as a member of the financially-challenged community, and a NonFiction writer who uses mostly primary documents, I’d be abolutely lost without access to organizations who lend books and other related materials (i.e., libraries, federal book depositories, archives, etc.). On the other hand, there are some history-based fiction books that I read repetitively, and ocassionally purchase copies of same.
Book lenders and sellers serve a vital purpose for all levels of society. To view or provoke them as competitors or enemies, is a shameless display of ignorance.
My thanks to Bill for a thoroughly insightful discussion on this matter.
vehoae
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[...] that every book sold to a library translates into “lost” sales to private citizens. I addressed this myth—showing how it was just wrong— way back in May of 2010 when a particular Hi & Lois cartoon made an odd connection between library use and shuttered [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bill Young. Bill Young said: rants on a Hi and Lois comic strip that appears to dis libraries. Rant! Rant! http://tinyurl.com/29jee6g [...]