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if wikipedia can cut into public library usage it points to the thinness of information that's typically available in public libraries.
i've spent way too much time in university libraries and after a while you get used to what really is an astonishing luxury if you have regular access to a good research library. and you get spoiled by that to some extent. i have trouble going to public libraries in general to research much of anything because the collections simply aren't geared around research. archival holdings, special collections--they can be quite different---but the general collections?
public libraries are such a great idea. they really are. it's a shame that they're not treated better. you'd think that if the united states were in any meaningful way a democracy that the public's access to quality information would be important.
i work these days building internet databases, so i have a pretty good idea of what kind of information you can access for serious research on-line--and there is an enormous amount--but you have to pay for it--the dominant way in the states is that you pay, but not directly, but rather through some sort of institutional affiliation.
that way an illusion of equal access can be maintained.
but if you're a regular joe without particular access to these more specialized databases and you want to research stuff, you can access some information, but it's typically not that deep. if you're in that position, the illusion's not convincing.
behind that, though, there's a pretty fundamental reorganization of how information is produced and distributed that's happening, but the directions it will take are still kind of amorphous. so looking around now, it can seem like public libraries are taking a beating, people preferring wikipedia for superficial (but useful even in its superficiality) information to it; the relation of electronic to paper texts is still not obvious; so another dimension of what's happening to public libraries is a function of this being a strange time.
anyway..i think public libraries are a hugely neglected resource. maybe in some alternate universe, this place will figure out that it makes sense to place something like comparable access on making resources available that enable cultivation of interests and capabilities that go beyond buying shit, that it is as important to develop these resources as it is to develop technological systems designed to kill people in great number with maximum efficiency.
public libraries; open access platforms for delivering information across the net--these are fundamentally democratic institutions. private, for profit mechanisms are no more efficient and have the significant disadvantage of shutting people out.
this is one of those seemingly little things that bothers me. alot.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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