I live in the Chicago area and I have to tell you that the local Fox news station has little or no connection to the national Fox News Channel. In fact, like all of Chicago’s local news shows, the Fox news show is a bit left of center in its news reporting and opinion.

Was the article well thought out and reasonable? Not in my opinion, but the knee jerk reactions from Boing Boing regulars about it seem to stem almost entirely from it being on a FOX website.

Would reactions have been the same if this opinion piece came from the Chicago Sun-Times? How about the Chicago Reader or the Chicago Defender?

Although with such dazzlingly beautiful hair cuts on all those TV people, it is not easy for some, I know.

You won’t get far claiming it was wrong for Kagan to do her job. I mean, I don’t like Kagan, myself, and I can find plenty of real things to criticise her for… but c’mon. Do something more than regurgitate Faux “News”, will ya?

Probably all three.
Why not get a book instead, and spend some quiet summer time, under a tree?
The tree of learning…

All that being said… there are a lot better cuts to make than libraries — at least out here in SoCal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library

Maybe Fox ought to get with the Program before they find their revenues falling.

Och! Leave it to a Scot to now the true worth of oatmeal, compared to the spirit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zi6xYkdBPA

Yes, Libraries are wonderful places but the world never had the internet before and now its affecting thier worth in the eyes of alot of people: the same people who approve funding for them. The library in my town constantly has to do fund raisers since they keep getting thier budget slashed.

Don’t get insulting simply because someone has a viewpoint that clashes with your own.

Fox news reported on something, it happens, they make news stories and asked a question “Should Libraries stay open?” and you know what you do than? You answer the question, and if you want your library to stay open you go to the people who fund them and say “I want it to stay open and here is why and the benifiets”.

I don’t appreciate being insulted over this matter since I always vote for library funding and donate a fair amount of money to my local one to keep it open.

How about practicing what you preach here and have an open mind?

Last time I checked, the City of Chicago does not have an army, navy, or air force.

If you are suggesting that the city reduce the budget of its police force (the only “guns” that are paid for by city taxpayers) in order to fully fund its libraries, that is a proposition which deserves to be placed before its voters. I can see myself voting for it.

Well, the other thing that isn’t mentioned in the article is that essentially the same story, adapted for local institutions, ran at pretty much the same time on the Philadelphia Fox station, the Boston Fox station, and the New York Fox station. I haven’t found any non-Fox stations running such a story at the same time, on a quick Google News search.

Odd, er, coincidence, don’t you think?

The thing is, lending movies is an important part of what public libraries can do. I think there’s a tendency for people to assume that libraries must be high-fiber, low-salt institutions, giving you only substantial, hearty, dusty fare like textbooks and reference sources.

But the point of a public library is not to serve as a supplement or a replacement for an inadequate public school system–it’s to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the intellectual discourse of society. And I mean “intellectual” broadly–that includes being up to speed on facets of culture that were made primarily for entertainment. People who are exposed to new ideas that they can bounce off of each other from lots of different sources.

I’m not even going to argue (for now) that people borrowing the Twilight series will go on to borrow more and more serious books, because many won’t. But the fact that so many people *can* access those books brings a broader audience together that can discuss them, the ideas in them, or how they fit into our culture. That’s important in and of itself.

I do not advocate shutting them down, but it’s true that libraries are no longer the primary ways for ordinary people to access knowledge.

Just saying.

http://www.slate.com/id/2254830

This is actually true on average: while some library books circulate dozens of times or more, others don’t circulate at all. The only factoid I remember from my collection development course was a study that concluded that the average book circulated once. (Though I don’t remember what kind of library that referred to: public, academic, or both.)

The cost of selecting, acquiring, cataloguing, and managing a book often exceeds the purchase price of the book, so on average, books would probably be cheaper if everyone just bought their own.

However, a library is much more than a collection of books you can borrow. There is all the activity involved in selecting, organizing, cataloguing, and reference services, all of which help you to find not only books you didn’t know existed but also information you knew you wanted but didn’t know where to find. A library also preserves books that don’t have mass appeal but might be of great interest or even vital importance to you: they serve as a public record of our history and published heritage. Amazon is a great place to go for stuff that’s in print, but sometimes you need access to stuff that’s out of print, and the used book market can be pretty hit and miss. If your library doesn’t have the book you need, they have people who can find another library that does and get it on interlibrary loan from them.

Libraries are also about a lot more than just books. Books are still a core part of the library’s services, but libraries are offering a variety of other services, including access to computers and Internet and electronic resources (many of which are not free) and a host of other services. A quick search of my public library’s Web site shows 940 library programs.

There’s also the importance as libraries as centers of excellence and research: public libraries, especially the larger ones, are active participants in advancing the state of the art, such as the digitization of print collections and the development of online access to those collections (without signing away the rights of future generations to Google in the process).

Lastly, libraries are a public space in an age where truly public spaces are becoming a rare and precious commodity.

I, and I expect most people, would be just as angry if it were suggested by any news network, or anyone at all. Libraries are precious, important things and to have them treated with the seeming disregard this article projects is absolutely offensive.

I would not care to live in a world without libraries, and I’m very serious about that.

A dozen workstations take up a lot less space than the reference stacks they replace. A room full of fiction on MP3/CD takes up a tenth of the shelvage that the same titles do in hardcover.

There is no more need to subsidize -analog- libraries than there is to subsidize analog music distribution.

Libraries are the backbone of any civilized nation.
We may want to re-evaluate what role libraries play, but they’re essential.
Free and open access to knowledge is the lifeblood of our culture.

Long story short: please don’t de-fund the Library of Congress (at least), quite yet.

It is a busy library. More people may be using computers than in years past, but it still fulfills its role as a cultural center of education. Take a look: http://tinyurl.com/2az4kf7