Charging out-of-towners for library cards

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Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:23 pm

I come from Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, nearly every town is part of a local library system that makes requesting books from other towns as easy as requesting books from another branch of the city library in Austin. In Massachusetts, every town is part of the state library system, which makes inter-library loans wicked easy. In Massachusetts, there's no requirement that you live in a town to have a library card there.

I was shocked when I moved to Austin to see that non-Austin residents are charged $180 for an Austin library card. At the time I interpreted it as a "fuck you" to Rolllingwood, West Lake Hills, and Sunset Valley, three suburban enclaves which draw businesses with low taxes and regulations and therefore have resisted the all-engulfing tentacles of Austin. However I was reading this article which mentioned that after state cuts an El Paso suburb charged fifty bucks for access to El Paso, and in in the comments mentioned that Utah urban libraries charge $175 for non-residents to get a card.

So it seems to me like the phenomenon of urban libraries charging non-residents for access is fairly widespread, and seems to be a reaction to red states cutting state funding for libraries. And I get the logic. "Suburbs are richer and better-off than cities are, why should we subsidize non-residents?" But it catches rural areas, which are often poorer than the cities in their nets as well, and even if it didn't it would still rub me the wrong way.

Cities don't charge out-of-towners to use their streets or police, and it really upsets me that they do it WRT libraries. Mass literacy has been one of the great forces for equality, and I strongly believe that libraries should be universal. You shouldn't use them to try to recover money you feel is being lost to other towns.

But like I said, I come from Massachusetts. I'm curious what y'all think.
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Last edited by cmsellers on Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby Lindvaettr » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:33 pm

While I agree with you on the idea that libraries should be free to use for all, I can definitely see how funding being cut for libraries would cause libraries to seek additional revenue streams elsewhere. Libraries aren't cheap to operate. I don't have time to find any numbers, but you have staff pay, resource acquisition costs, general maintenance, the costs of putting on events and programs, probably high costs for data centers to store all the data about books such, and who knows what other costs.

Meanwhile, libraries don't have anything they can do for money. They can't sell more products, or expand into selling additional products. They can't really downsize without risking losing even more funding ("Why should we keep giving money to failing libraries?"). It's very possible that adding library card fees for non-residents is the only relatively acceptable way they can get much needed money.

As far as funding is concerned, I think libraries should be getting more, not less, but since they are getting less, I understand the need to make up the difference somehow.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:39 pm

I mean I could care, but I don't. After all, how else do you expect them to pay for those books? Taxation? At the municipal level it doesn't work because out of towners don't use it. At the state level it just results in people being pissy and not voting for you anymore.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby CarrieVS » Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:13 pm

I guess it's better than closing the library, if they genuinely don't have the funding to keep operating otherwise? Sucks in a big way that libraries don't get adequately funded.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:44 pm

Lind and Carrie: I think you're missing the fact that it's big-city libraries which are doing this, big-city libraries whose local user bases dwarf surrounding areas and which benefit from economies of scale that even the best-funded suburban libraries don't enjoy (Austin has one library per 45k people).

And Austin in particular is in a good position since it has has annexed most of the rich suburban areas in the west while leaving poor suburban areas to the east unincorporated. In fact it wouldn't entirely surprise me if it's resentment from well-off people who found themselves annexed into Austin that drove this policy in the first place. And Austin just spent 126 million on a fancy new central library, which doesn't suggest the library is in imminent danger of closing.

Here is the most recent library budget I can find, and I know they were charging for out-of-town cards by that point. Either out-of-town library cards are "expense refunds" and make up no more than .2% of revenue, or else they're levied by the city rather than the library and comprise some unspecified part of the 14% "other" revenues in the city's general fund. Either way, it's not like this is a measure imposed by librarians to keep the libraries open.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby Australia » Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:42 pm

You could leave but...

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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby SandTea » Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:29 pm

What might be (surprisingly) overlooked here is the fact that libraries are frequently used as "free shelters" by the disadvantaged. It might be that this policy is being used to try to dissuade folk from sleeping/masturbating/doing drugs/just being all homeless around people, in the library.

I know that the library I used to visit was used, I won't say mostly but "a shit ton" for people trying to find jobs in a world where the internet is basically as needed as an address to do so, so I think it is bad if they charge $100+ to use their computers.
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Last edited by SandTea on Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:37 pm

What's a library?
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:37 am

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:What's a library?


It's a place that homeless people in big cities go to to find jobs and do drugs. Also, ocassionally try to watch porn.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby Bromo » Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:04 am

I'd rather buy my books. I'm a procrastinator, so I rarely finish a book within a week since getting it. Most of the books I bought from a Books-A-Million several years ago I've barely even read. Very few I have finished, and only some that I'm almost finished with but am too lazy to finish.
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Re: Charging out-of-towners for library cards

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:16 am

SandTea wrote:What might be (surprisingly) overlooked here is the fact that libraries are frequently used as "free shelters" by the disadvantaged. It might be that this policy is being used to try to dissuade folk from sleeping/masturbating/doing drugs/just being all homeless around people, in the library.

I know that the library I used to visit was used, I won't say mostly but "a shit ton" for people trying to find jobs in a world where the internet is basically as needed as an address to do so, so I think it is bad if they charge $100+ to use their computers.

If the homeless people lived in Austin I think you might have a civil rights case. Next time I go in I'll ask how a homeless person would get a card.

I also don't know if the library charges ouf-of-towners to use the computers. To use the computers you need an account based on your driver's license number, which is different from your library card number. I don't know if you need to have an account with the library to use them. I'm also not sure how they'd handle people without driver's licenses and will ask about these things too.
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