Once upon a time in Nashville I visited the library to get some peace and quiet in order to study for the GRE. Nashville's public library is a stately affair with marble, Grecian columns and the whole nine yards. So it was a little bit surprising to see a fair amount of homeless people in the grandiose reading room. It only took a second to warm up the juxtaposition. Homeless people in libraries are a common sight.

The amount of libraries I've been is probably in the vicinity of fifteen, a number most likely greater than the average person. School libraries are a different story, but public libraries are an interesting thing. Certainly they are no longer what they were orignally intended for. Currently I am in Frazier Valley library. It's the nearest country library to the wealthy skiing enclave of Winter Park maybe sixty miles west of Denver. It's pretty nice. Beyond being clean and well equipped, it is clear that an top architect was well paid to make it look modern and swanky. Much nicer than that of rural Gunnison (which is most likely going to get a grant from the Gates foundation, more on that later). But no matter the type of building, the services a public library provides are generally the same.

The periodicals rack here is about half depleted. What type of periodicals are there? Maxim, Mad, Entertainment Weekly. National Geographic and the Atlantic are on there too, but Foreign Affairs most certainly is not. At Tallahassee's public library (great place to go when FSU's library was overflowing) the most prominently featured items were DVDs. Few people were actually checking out books. In West Palm Beach's spanking new public library a spate of activities are offered and there are many floors of reading materials. Yet, the only areas that are really packed are the computers, and the screens more often than not are telltale Facebook blue and white.

Public libraries have become free internet cafes and free DVD rentals. They don't offer access to knowledge so much as free entertainment. The main reason I'm in a library right now is because of my life on the fringe. It's free wifi and shelter from the elements.

So what is it that I am prescribing here? When one thinks of tax dollars at work there are a few discretionary expenses that come to mind. Schools, roads, libraries. Libraries are a good thing and compared to entitlement spending they're probably pretty cheap. But it seems to me that libraries were originally meant to ensure public access to knowledge. The internet has coopted that mission and in the information age they've been searching for a meaning. The only way to keep people coming in and to justify their existence was to put Maxim and Entertainment Weekly onto the periodical shelves and become a free movie rental for the destitute. This isn't to say that there aren't some people in here and in Nashville and in downtown West Palm who use libraries in search of higher knowledge. It's also not to say that free movie rental for the destitute is a bad thing. But instead of looking at the internet as a competitor, what if libraries saw them as an enabler of that original mission?

Being a student at FSU meant access to a plethora of fancy journals. At times the content was hefty and difficult to get through. Others like ipoll were flat out cool. But in any event it was the real deal. There was no spin, it was original thought from the world's smartest people. The Palm Beach County library system does have an electronic database, but it's paltry and focuses on things like auto repair. But what if Palm Beach County, Gunnison County and Davidson County all got together and collectively hammered out a deal with prestigious journals in the same manner that FSU has? Public access only through library computers with a limited amount of views. It couldn't really be that expensive. I would imagine that foregoing one of the downtown library's four floors could cover the cost.

While in Gunnison county's library someone from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation asked if I didn't mind having my picture taken showing the cramped working spaces. The foundation is considering giving the library a grant. So Bill Gates and some other rich people are about to shell out a few million dollars building a fancy daylight hours homeless shelter and free DVD rental out in the sticks. If they directed that money a little bit differently it's possible that the real life Will Huntings out there could have access to information that enables them to come up with some idea that changes our world for the better. Why are we abandoning that original mission?

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