What a quaint idea Andrew Carnegie had when he subsidized 2,500 free public libraries a century ago. He wanted knowledge to be free to the public.
Today, our reformers don’t believe in subsidizing anything other than for those at the very bottom (but not much). If you want a book, buy it. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, they assume, you don’t really need it. They have all the books they want, so why do we need public libraries?
A reader, David Eckstrom, writes about the library in his community:
I am on the board of trustees for my local public library. Our usage continues to grow every year at about 10%, but our funding (which comes from the county) has been flat for at least the 3 years I have been on the board.
I live in WI and our governor has made it a major part of his mission to cut funding to municipalities and to give them the “tools” they need to deal with the cuts (i.e. eliminate collective bargaining so the municipalities can make their employees pay for the cuts). However, we are finding that there is no way cutting the salaries and benefits of the few employees on our staff can possibly make up for the growing gap in funding caused by the increased usage. In fact, cutting the salaries of all employees to minimum wage with no benefits would not even make up the gap. When our county begins (probably next year) to pass the cuts on down to us, that funding gap will get even larger.
The only way we are continuing to survive now is by dipping into the reserves we have accumulated over the years from private donations. We project that money will last another 1.5 – 2 years and then we will have to start reducing services.
What do we eliminate first? The heavily used juvenile section? The heavily used public computers? The heavily used periodicals collection? The heavily used adult collection? The heavily used community outreach programs? There is evident need for everything we provide, but something is definitely going to have to go. It won’t affect people who can afford their own books, computers, periodicals and educational programs, so who the hell cares? Not our governor.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s the answer: privatize, digitize, and outsource! Sell your library to LibraryCo (a wholly owned Koch Brothers subsidiary), replace the books with second hand Kindles and laptops (some collector will buy the books for sentimental purposes), and replace the library staff “hot lines” connected to a help desk in India.
Our county recently passed a dedicated 1/8 cent sales tax to support the library system, which had been cut back to just 2-3 days a week at each of the branches. The libraries are thriving again, and are not only open again on Tuesdays and Fridays (woo) but even, amazingly, Sundays.
The libraries are incredibly busy and I’m very very glad that our community voted to support them.
Thanks for that bit of good news. We are so fortunate to have 4 small libraries in our town! They are all well used and their presence in different parts of the city means that children can get there on their own. The bad news is that our school libraries are suffering. The Board of Ed cut staff at both the elementary and middle schools so the libraries are only open every other day.
I’ve found that my county library system (in the largest county in Maryland)has “deaccessioned” many of the moderately old books that I’d like to reread, so it does not have as much literary memory as it had a decade ago. Instead, the shelves are full of best-sellers and DVDs. For anything really unusual, I often need to use the state-wide Interlibrary Loan system, to get a book from the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, which appears to still believe in having stacks as well as current bestsellers.
It seems like this country is going to war with the poor. It’s the poor which are hurt most by cuts to the libraries. It’s the poor that are hurt (first) with the education deform movement. I say first, because the deform movement is gunning for everyone, it just started with the poor kids.
Please know that school libraries are in much worse shape than the public libraries. Both are seen as unnecessary by the billionaire boys, but as a teacher librarian in California, I am literally witnessing the decimation of my profession. Eventually only private and parochial schools will have school librarians.