Where have all the Libraries Gone

Latest news from our local paper is that the yearly cost for library membership is rising 90%, from 10 euros per year to 19 euros per year. That's really quite a jump. It's sort of...obscene. I mean, normally a price hike occurs with regularity in the order of fifty cents or a euro at a time, perhaps yearly. Little tiny digs at a time are less painful and can be adapted to better than a massive gouge at once -- this is simply true.

The reason for the near-doubling of price is that since 2003 or so, the visitors using the library have gone up by 45%. One might also think that the late fees associated with books returned late have also gone up 45% or so, if a rate of paid fines can be plotted. But I'm no mathematician, or anything. Where does the money for late fees go?

I would think that increased use of a public entity would mean that the library then is ripe for more public funding. If it's being used more, then more of our tax money, collectively, should go to support it.

I don't know where all the tax money goes in this society. It would take a lifetime to figure it out, I believe. I notice that in town, the trees in the parks are trimmed yearly at great expense, especially when the trimming appears unnecessary and is done only to healthy trees. I notice that certain offices in the city building are filled with marginally busy employees serving trickles of customers. I have personally experienced getting a bill for the remainder of a service totalling less than 80 cents -- the postage, the paper, and the work done to write and send the bill would have added up to far more than the return (and could have been added economically to my next bill).

I know that the library is well used, and used well, and has well-trained, responsive employees. Many folks depend on it. The collection is as good as a small town can hope for, and is regularly beefed up with all that folks want to read. So, logically, it deserves a greater share of the pie.

Instead, its customers will be penalized and made to pay almost twice as much as they ever did. Their children still get to borrow for free, because the literacy of children is acknowledged to be so very important, even though the literacy of their parents, from whom they learn it in the first place, can still be pumped for cash. Unemployed folks still have to pay 7.50€ per year.

19€ per year isn't a huge amount of money. In a city, it might be a commuter's weekly allowance for coffee, but here, I feel it. And it just seems ass-backwards to penalize customers further, in an economic slow-down time (when are we going to called it a Depression?) when the libraries are one of the last great institutions of communal sharing. It irks me, and it makes me want to listen to Woody Guthrie records.

The main hall of the Denver Public Library.

2,382,672 things to check out. Library cards are issued for free.

I don't have a tidy way to wrap this up. I miss American libraries. Gawd, I can hardly think of their generous bounty without disbelieving myself, but it is so. I used to check out stacks of books, 16 high, anything and everything that I would ever want to buy. I could check out things on inter-library loan, for free, and have them shipped from Nebraska to read. I bought second had books at their sales for .50 and a dollar which later were found to be rare and pricey. (And now, mine.)

America might not be a terrific exponent of socialism, but frankly, nobody else has nailed it as well as Americans have for libraries--one of the best socialist ideas of all time.