I see so many stories like this, "What would you cut? Cops or books?" where someone wonders about what's more important, the fire department, the police or libraries. And it's a no-win situation for libraries. Do librarians stop crime? Do they save your kitty from up a tree?
Everyone always has that same opinion that libraries should be cut because everything is online. There is nothing you can't get from the library that you can't get on the internet. Mostly true, but doesn't your house have running water? Doesn't every house in the city have water? So why don't we cut the fire department and put out our own fires? Has firefighting evolved in the last 100 years? Not if you count "making that hot red shit that burns everything go away" as their main purpose.
And don't even get me started on the police and my Batman or The Punisher fantasies. I'm convinced that the only reason I don't lose weight is because I fear that I might patrol the city's rooftops looking for criminals if I were in better shape.
Both fire fighting and policing the streets are things the average citizen could do, and has done in the past. But we want a safe, orderly society, so we pay professionals to do this stuff. And if we want to continue to have an educated society, we should also pay for libraries.
Now we have the internet and people just want to put a kid in front of the computer and tell him, "There's the whole world. Go get it." And this is supposed to replace the library?
Why don't we give each person a bucket of water and tell him to watch for fires? Or give out guns and some WANTED posters?
I would continue with this thought, but I need to post 30 times this month, so I'll pick this up later. No, this isn't cheating.
