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Pastimes : Authors & Books & Comments
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To: LindyBill who wrote (2083)10/24/2009 8:30:16 AM
From: JohnM   of 9626
 
I suspect I will be toes-up before we see any changes.

No doubt about it. But I conflated, just for conversational purposes, two things that threaten our usage patterns say within the next ten years or so. And, though I certainly don't know about you, I expect to be around and reading books for at least that long.

Public funding for libraries is going to drop; perhaps precipitously; because of the general public funding crisis and libraries are last in line in terms of perceived public needs (not good but, at least around here, that's the case). As our mayor and the most influential council member said to me a couple of months ago, "you have all that stuff over there; just get rid of some of that and we can fund police, fire, etc."

Unless public libraries find other funding sources--charging for services (which runs counter to the long standing notion of "free" public libraries); building capital resources such as endowments; having much more serious annual fund raising drives than most do; the only other option is cutting back services. And our dependence on wideband holdings will suffer. Probably won't disappear; certainly not around here; but it could get curtailed.

E-books fit within overall picture. Because like every other digital invention, they will be seen as cost savers. They won't, of course. They'll simply be one more thing. And thus a cost add on.
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