The Library.

[Anonymous No.7218199]

>inter-library loan required for any non-NYT bestseller
>local branches are 90% children's books and DVDs
>formal requests for non-NYT bestsellers are summarily denied
>donated non-NYT bestsellers are shunted to the Friends of the Library bookstore
>homeless people everywhere
>people talking on cellphones everywhere
>primary use of library is for free Internet and action movie rental

What went wrong with the whole public library thing?

[Anonymous No.7218204]

>>7218199
you live in a poor neighborhood

[Anonymous No.7218208]

>>7218204
"States" denizen here. Have lived in eight of them and visited hundreds of public libraries. Most library branches are just DVDs, music CDs and audiobooks, YA fic, magazines, and the rest is an afterthought unless and only unless it's a main branch.

Main branches are still pretty cool but also full of homeless people and you still can't get odd books without waiting an indeterminate amount of time and possibly paying a fee. If I have to pay five dollars for shipping and can only keep the book for fourteen days, I think I'll just buy it, thanks.

[Anonymous No.7218214]

what kind of faggity ass city do u live in brah? even the public library in newark nj has some patrish as shit marxist shit in the stacks and a fuck ass of foreign language dvds, and the few bums are well behaved and not allowed to watch porn on the free internet. are you in the south or some other semi-fascist christhole?

[Anonymous No.7218220]

Go to university libraries

[Anonymous No.7218221]

You live in a shitty area bro. My library is dope. Get top-tier lit and can buy it for $1 if I want.

[Anonymous No.7218234]

>>7218199
My Uni library is pretty stacked tbh, better than any city library I've ever been to, despite the homeless patrons.

[Anonymous No.7218237]

There has never been a time where normal people read serious literature. Grandma Sue never made a beeline to the Dostoevsky section of a public library. Stop being a declinist and a hero of your own narrative, you are not some last man intellectual.

Folks use the library for their children and for distraction.

[Anonymous No.7218238]

Whining about having to put something on hold is stupid.
And whining about homeless people is classist you Marxist fuck.

[Anonymous No.7218256]

>>7218238
I didn't mention the holds system (which is discrete from inter-library loans), but yeah it's terrible too and also worth whining about.

I had to wait LITERALLY eight months for the Atlas Shrugged: Part One DVD to become available. That's ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.7218263]

>>7218237
Libraries have been replaced by the Internet for general reading purposes. People who are patrician enough to read literature as a pastime spend their money to build their own libraries.

Libraries waste their budgets flailing around for anything to stay in the "21st century" (disc collections, special events, cafes, cinemas). They should drop all of that. You can't be a better cafe than an actual coffee shop. You can't be a better movie rental than Netflix. Etc etc.

Not to mention the day homeless problem fucks with libraries' image. I'm urban hard as fuck as anyone here on /lit/ will pretend to be but I don't want to subject myself to the crazy people yelling at people from the street as they walk in, or having to sit at a desk next to a man who hasn't bathed in weeks.

It's a tough fix for them to be in, but if they could just do nothing but literature, quiet reading rooms, and push the free internet/homeless daycare into a different building, libraries would come back in a big way.

[Anonymous No.7218295]

>go in once a couple months
>spend 10 minutes picking out 5-10
>check out and leave
>renew online if I have to

no complaints here.

[Anonymous No.7218442]

>>7218295
>>spend 10 minutes picking out 5-10
5-10 what? Action movie DVDs?

[Anonymous No.7218453]

>>7218442
you guessed it

[Anonymous No.7218458]

>>7218199
My city just built a massive public library with an extensive collection and it's the best thing to ever happen.

[Anonymous No.7218472]

>>7218458
What city? Looking for a daytime hangout

[Anonymous No.7218481]

>>7218199
>there are people on /lit/ RIGHT NOW who think the average person is intelligent or curious enough to be a meaningful part of the political conversation
Visit your local library branch and tell me if democracy was a good idea.

[Anonymous No.7218491]

>>7218214

Not OP but even in philadelphia it's pretty shitty.
At the main regional libraries it's hard to find anything other than pulp stuff or the classics. Even the main library downtown is pretty lacking. The only good stuff is to be found in the university libraries (which are plentiful at least if you have a student ID).

I'm saying you can find As I Lay Dying sure, but good luck finding the second volume of Dream of the Red chamber anywhere in the public library system here.

[Anonymous No.7218501]

Why the fuck aren't you losers browsing university libraries? Literally heaven on earth, I spend over 40 hours a week at mine

[Anonymous No.7218516]

>>7218199
>NYT bestseller
>NYT bestseller
>NYT bestseller

Wouldn't just 'bestseller' suffice?

[Anonymous No.7218524]

>>7218516
Conservative bestsellers are censored by the NYT and aren't commonly carried by public libraries.

[Anonymous No.7218532]

>>7218481
Working-class people were fairly well-versed in contemporary literature (what we'd consider the classics) in the 1800s, and there was a strong labour-press publishing journals, newspapers, etc.

Then, corporate capitalism came along with mass education, mass communications, labour trends to deskill and disempower the workforce, and now all anyone wants to do after they get back from their shitty, dehumanizing jobs is watch shit television, and everyone's the worse off for it.

That is, I think you've got it backwards. Democracy is a good idea, capitalism is a bad idea, and we should curtail the latter so the former has a chance to bloom.

[Anonymous No.7218565]

>>7218532
damn marxists go hard at this romantic revisionism. impressive how nostalgic you are for such a fantastic vision of the past.

[Anonymous No.7218591]

>>7218199
Every book over 70 years old is free for download on the internet in an ebook format. Libraries are literally only relevant for free Internet and childrens' books (which are best read in a physical medium with pictures).

Hell, go to the library and download free PDFs of public domain books on their free internet onto your thumb drive.

[Anonymous No.7218597]

>>7218204

Rich bitch here. In wealthy city libraries its even more magnified. American's have no sense of taste or public decency.

[Anonymous No.7218605]

>>7218565
I'd like to see a return of an engaged, intellectual labour press/public sphere (I realize before bourgeois mass literacy programs, a great deal of workers wouldn't necessarily be reading), I think we'd be better off if automation hadn't developed to deskill and disempower the working class, and I think we'd be better off if mass communications hadn't interrupted an otherwise coherent and materially-aware working class culture, sue me.

I realize I jumped between decades/centuries, so, I mean, sorry my 100 word post wasn't as nuanced as you'd have liked it to be.

[Anonymous No.7218629]

>>7218605
You'll never had an intellectual working class in a culture that don't even have an intellectual elite or upper class anymore.

[Anonymous No.7218642]

>>7218605
so you want a stronger class system with lower chances of social mobility and more poor so you can have a "working class culture" and some cool labour pamphlets to jizz over.

[Anonymous No.7218673]

>>7218532
>Working-class people were fairly well-versed in contemporary literature (what we'd consider the classics) in the 1800s, and there was a strong labour-press publishing journals, newspapers, etc.

relatively fewer people were 'middle' or 'upper middle' class then so an intelligent person who was born was more likely to be born into the working class than he is now. during the 20th century most intelligent working class people become upper middle class, the genetic stock of the contemporary working class does not produce as many intelligent people as it used to, though of course it produces some.

however during the next 30 years or so when mass unemployment becomes widespread and social mobility is effectively impossible, more middle class people will become poor so we'll likely see more intelligent working class people again.

[Thomas No.7218680]

>>7218481
>people complexly shaped and educated to fulfill caste functions
>complain that democracy doesn't work because the people who are shaped specifically to fulfill the toilet cleaning and hole digging caste functions aren't as intelligent as the people shaped to rule and indoctrinate

[Anonymous No.7218709]

>>7218642
Yes, that's exactly it. I want a workforce with some say over the way their workplace functions, and as a result, I want everything to be the way it was in the 1800s. 10/10 reading comprehension.

[Anonymous No.7218726]

Is it chance that bookstores near Arizmendi bakeries are all really keen?

[Anonymous No.7218733]

>>7218709
try decoupling your pro-union views from your elitism and anti-industrialization ones and maybe I'll reconsider your silly nostalgia

[Anonymous No.7218777]

>>7218733
I'm anti-industrialization because I can imagine a version of automation that didn't deskill the workforce and empower the managerial class (note: automation progressed through the 30s-60s such that it actually negatively affected efficiency and profit)? And I'm elitist because, uh, I want a less precarious position for the working class? Really, dude?

[Anonymous No.7218929]

>>7218777
wait, let me get this straight, you think industrial capitalism "deskills" the workforce more than agriculture? my god learn to think you silly fool

[Anonymous No.7218938]

>>7218199

Go to a university library instead -- I've only used ILL for books that are really from left field, like one of Robbe-Grillet's obscure works or a specific Welsh grammar book. I was able to pick from one of 10 Welsh dictionaries and the rest of Grillet's works as I pleased, however, and I've found many books that haven't been opened by a student in over 50 years

[Anonymous No.7218954]

I live in Ann Arbor, a university town, and our library is really top tier

[Anonymous No.7219469]

>>7218234

My uni library is sick as. Literally every author published by a major press since 1900 that I've looked for has been in there, shit's fucked. Looking for Kjell Askildsen I found four of his books in the original Norwegian. I live in Australia and I've literally never met a person who speaks Norwegian.

[Anonymous No.7219489]

>>7218199
>go to library
>its fucking stacked with anime
What's the point? People download that shit.
No one's going to take a copy of Monster Musume to the library counter
>excuse me, I'd like to borrow this soft core monster girl porn
pretty good taste though

[Meshuy !!mmLRfaYrd6O No.7219611]

>>7218237
Of course, there was. Before the television, people had to go to the theater to watch a movie so they bought books or read published authors—just like Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo were once—in the newspaper. Books were almost free, it didn't cost as much as today. What do you think they were reading? Pulp? Alexandre Dumas was. Honoré de Balzac was. Our very definition of “pulp”, “cheap” author has nothing in common with the kind of elitism that existed in the past. If you happen to find an obscure writer the history would rather forget, it's still written ten times better than ours is. Classics weren't Eugène Sue, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire—he first translated Edgar Allan Poe who was considered a quite vulgar author—but classical literature, writers of a higher class during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, educated with Latin, Old Greek and biblic studies. You would kill for being what was considered a “pleb” then. Something else I find curious is that, when I was a child, everybody could read a partition. People went to work or walked in the street and they read a little booklet just like they would read a book, singing in their head or whistling. Today few learn to read music.

[Anonymous No.7219646]

>>7219611
>books were almost free
>this whole fucking post
Ci-fucking-tation needed for everything.

[Anonymous No.7219684]

>>7218263

Why would you sit in the library if you didn't want to use the internet or to do some work? Just to fucking read?

Libraries used to fucking suck before they modernised. I remember going to them in the 90s and they were just hangouts for people that had nowhere else to go and their collections sucked. A lot of libraries were struggling to even stay open then.

It's changed a lot now in the UK at least. It's good to have a study or work space for people that are less than computer-literate, or people that need to job search or work from home. The homeless are only an issue in places where the library isn't popuar AKA your future library where there is only room for homeless people.

If you want libraries full of literature then go to university or one of the fancy big city libraries. Other libraries are for pulp fiction, reference books, children and nerdy teens, and the homeless looking for somewhere to read the newspaper and take a shit. You can buy a secondhand classic for pennies online, why pay for the library to order in a damn book for you?

[Meshuy !!mmLRfaYrd6O No.7219702]

>>7219646
Well, I don't know where you live but it was like that when I was a child. I got this book for 10 francs in the 60's, which is something like 1,50 dollars. Many books were printed with the same low-quality paper then sold in the street, in groceries or cheap bookstores. Most of my library is made with those books. We used to buy them and candies once a week or so.

[Anonymous No.7219714]

>>7219702
That's actually pretty neat.
Got any other old man stories like that?

[Anonymous No.7219720]

>>7219702

There's a 70 year old tripfag on /lit/? You must be the envy of your friends.

[Meshuy !!mmLRfaYrd6O No.7219741]

>>7219714
There's not much to say. Here are other low-cost books. Once I worked I would rather buy higher quality ones.

>>7219720
Well, I'm new here. I had a hard time getting the tripcode thing.

[Anonymous No.7219752]

>>7219684
>Why would you sit in the library if you didn't want to use the internet or to do some work? Just to fucking read?
Y-yes

[Anonymous No.7219782]

>>7219752

Me too, Anon. I go to the state library after uni most days, just to sit and read.
>beautiful
>sun-lit
>mostly empty, except for a few Chinese high-schoolers studying
>has security to keep the hobos out, and to stop people from talking
>has a containment area for the old people trying to use computers

I feel so sorry for all the Americans in this thread.
Pic related

[Anonymous No.7219787]

>>7218532
whats sad is you probably believe this

[Anonymous No.7219795]

>>7219741
Grandpa, what's your opinion on this new fangled 4chains?

[Meshuy !!mmLRfaYrd6O No.7219804]

>>7219795
What?

[Anonymous No.7219832]

>>7218199

Well, my local library is awesome. Not even a sizeable town, not a university town either. So far they've had every classic I've went looking for. They don't have DFW and only a couple of books by Pynchon, but then again, it's not America.

[Anonymous No.7219835]

>>7219782

I just read in my house on the super comfy couch I own. I can sit in my underwear, play with my dick, lie down, grab a few ice cubes for my scotch, continuously read from couch to toilet which is clean and fresh and I can spend as long as I want in. I don't need a security guard to tell people to shut up or to keep gross people out... because it's my house.

I really don't see the appeal of going to a library to just read for pleasure. To me that would be like going into the office to watch television. Do you just want to be seen reading or something?

I bet you carry along a set of hardbacks in a book belt and then get on the bus and yell 'One for the library please, I'm going to be reading these bad boys and I need a hardback chair and intermittent silence to do that.' Then you try to crack one open and you keep tutting and looking at teenagers that are talking in the backseats.

[Anonymous No.7219851]

>>7219835

Like I said, it's empty mostly, so there's no one to impress. Honestly, I think I go there because if I'm at home I'll get too distracted by things that I "should" be doing instead. I guess if I was a NEET living in a shitty neighbourhood, reading at home would be more appealing.

[Anonymous No.7219945]

>>7218199
The government has lost it's ambition to educate people and nowadys most libraries are expected to be economical, so the free marked decides.
What you see in a library is what most of the people in your area want. Talk with them, convince them they need 'better' content and start a petition.

[Anonymous No.7221720]

>>7219835
I like to travel.

[Anonymous No.7222512]

>>7219611
>What do you think they were reading? Pulp?
Yes you fucking faggot they were reading pulp, there was an enormous industry churning out pulp fiction.

Most films were always throwaway flicks, most music was always jingle-tier pap, most books were meant to be read then binned.

[Anonymous No.7222636]

>>7218199
> live in a mid-sized Canadian town
> public library has Pynchon, Knausgard, Houellebecq in french
> can't find an early Delillo novel: "Would you like me to order a copy for you? I can put your name down..."
> decent collection of Criterion dvds
> go to the university library to read muh Milbank & Zizek in the art history section with all the qt hipster girls

Feels fucking good.

[Anonymous No.7222673]

>>7218199
>tfw my city has the biggest library system in the country
>university has every canon novel I could want and endless shelves of reference.
I'm not worthy rly~

[Anonymous No.7222690]

>>7218220
Enjoy checking out one of the thousands of volumes of a french psychology journal, years 1948-1962.

[Anonymous No.7222714]

>>7218199

>local library has an online cloud of digital copies you can borrow

Try living somewhere that isn't poor.

[Anonymous No.7223549]

>>7219835
>play with my dick
I assume that's when you read De Sade?

[Anonymous No.7223596]

>tfw working in two different university libraries and all I do the whole time is browse 4chan
>tfw today I left a 6 minute Youtube clip of a rhinoceros shitting open and playing on my station's screen while helping a patron who was on the other side of the monitor

[Anonymous No.7223601]

>>7219702
But 10 francs in the 60's was nothing like 1,50 dollars are now. Adjusted for inflation that would be closer to 50 dollars.

Also, I have the same Flowers of Evil edition as in your pic. Nice shit fam.

>>7218199
I live near Paris. I don't have that problem at all.

[Anonymous No.7223609]

I dunno about you guys but my local libraries are great, I'm Canadian.

>lots of books of all genres, non-bestsellers and all
>plenty of computers all with high speed internet
>free e-book copies of nearly every book and a lot which aren't carried physically
>usually no homeless people anywhere to be seen, when there are they are quiet but still smelly
>mostly quiet, people step outside the library or near the entrance to talk
>single, double and group private study rooms, some with soundproofing
>entire silent floor of tables for studying in central library
>staff are helpful and friendly
>places for clubs to meet, business seminars and other stuff goes on constantly
>youth hang around and talk quietly
>kids sections are tucked away from everything so the noise doesn't travel too far
>huge section of books in every library for language learning, mostly English for new immigrants
>can put books on hold through the internet
>books are always in the exact spot the online catalog says they are

feels great man

[Anonymous No.7223625]

>>7218208
What's wrong with YA fiction?

[Anonymous No.7223713]

>>7218680
This is a profoundly depressing post. Well done.

[Anonymous No.7223725]

>>7222512
Not that you're wrong, but I don't think you properly understood what he meant.

[Anonymous No.7223745]

You know its funny, i have fond memories of being a child and going to the library every Saturday while my mom went to groceries
.
The memories almost seem false,hazy, like a different reality that no child will ever experience again.
I would usually check out graphic novels, comics and shit.
But as i got older i would search for the /lit/ core stuff.
Also i remember wanting the bang the fat ass library lady.

I cant remember the last time i went to the library, all i do now is shitpost on the internet.

Who knows, maybe there is an alternate reality where the internet doesn't exist and i work at the library and im banging the fat ass librarian.

[Anonymous No.7223752]

>>7223601
10 francs in 1960 seems to be about $18 in 2015, as far as I can see.

[Anonymous No.7223756]

>>7218680
it seems we live in quite a brave new world

[Anonymous No.7223783]

>>7223609
Similar case here, you don't even need to go to my local library regularly to get stuff.
>Free e-books
>Free digital magazines
>Free lynda subscription

They also recently got a collection of console games for borrowing.

[Anonymous No.7223837]

Legit question. In a world of 24/7 access to essentially all of human knowledge in the palm of my hand, or at my comfy workstation, what relevance has the library to the average citizen?
In another age, it was the place where you could actually obtain the world's knowledge. That role has been effectively superseded.


Not trolling, honestly curious to hear what people say. I'm a bibliophile, so it's not like I'm against libraries.

[Anonymous No.7223884]

>>7222673
would pretend to like del toro with those thighs/10

[Anonymous No.7223899]

>>7218237
>you are not some last man intellectual
Yes I am, fuck off

[Anonymous No.7223932]

>>7218237
>use of the term "beeline"
>retarded projecting
checks out

[Anonymous No.7223949]

>>7222714
"States" denizen here. Have lived in eight of them and visited hundreds of public libraries. Most library branches are just DVDs, music CDs and audiobooks, YA fic, magazines, and the rest is an afterthought unless and only unless it's a main branch.

Main branches are still pretty cool but also full of homeless people and you still can't get odd books without waiting an indeterminate amount of time and possibly paying a fee. If I have to pay five dollars for shipping and can only keep the book for fourteen days, I think I'll just buy it, thanks.

[Anonymous No.7223970]

There's a consortium of libraries in my state so we can all borrow from each other easy. Every single donation goes to the friends, it never goes into the collection, that's used books man. And it's the suburbs so nobody's obnoxiously homeless. Any further questions?

[Anonymous No.7223975]

>>7223949
why the hell did you do this

[Anonymous No.7224043]

I haven't been to the library in years because I returned an overdue book and never paid the fine. I'm afraid of how big it is now.