The libraries in Belgium at least are absolutely amazing!
They are filled with :
- books (obviously) beautifully curated
- comics
- magazines
- sometimes even audiobooks in the form of CDs
- sometimes also events with authors on absolutely important topics like ... what it means to be human
and they are also
- basically free (few Euros per year, at most, and if you cannot pay)
- staffed with people who absolutely love the mission
... and empty.
It's totally nuts. They are basically full of top materials with dedicated staff, but nobody goes there. We even have toy libraries and... it's the same. Sure during some moments of the week it's relatively busy but mostly empty. Meanwhile we can order online any book or toy or video games for very little money... but also we don't use them for very long.
It's a very strange tension that we somehow manage to setup a very inclusive infrastructure for knowledge in few centuries, or arguably decades, yet in few years we totally cancelled ALL that effort.
Now libraries are looking for events because nobody "needs" content anymore.
The fact that libraries are not full of people doesn't negate their function. A hard drive doesn't need to be continually read and written to serve its purpose either.
Ah I see, then indeed we disagree about the point of a library. You see it as storage, I see it as a place for object, I see it as a place for people to meet, with the "excuse" o objects or via objects (e.g. books).
The libraries in Belgium at least are absolutely amazing!
They are filled with :
- books (obviously) beautifully curated
- comics
- magazines
- sometimes even audiobooks in the form of CDs
- sometimes also events with authors on absolutely important topics like ... what it means to be human
and they are also
- basically free (few Euros per year, at most, and if you cannot pay)
- staffed with people who absolutely love the mission
... and empty.
It's totally nuts. They are basically full of top materials with dedicated staff, but nobody goes there. We even have toy libraries and... it's the same. Sure during some moments of the week it's relatively busy but mostly empty. Meanwhile we can order online any book or toy or video games for very little money... but also we don't use them for very long.
It's a very strange tension that we somehow manage to setup a very inclusive infrastructure for knowledge in few centuries, or arguably decades, yet in few years we totally cancelled ALL that effort.
Now libraries are looking for events because nobody "needs" content anymore.