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Title: They’re closing libraries in London and New York
Source:
markcrispinmiller.com
URL Source: http://markcrispinmiller.com/2013/0 ... raries-in-london-and-new-york/
Published: Jun 9, 2013
Author: Carolyn McIntyre
Post Date: 2013-06-18 09:42:05 by GreyLmist
Keywords: New York City, London, libraries, public property plundered
Views: 3521
Comments: 23
What do New York City and London have in common? Both are eliminating their public libraries against the will of the public and replacing them with luxury housing, using secretive, deceptive tactics. Budget cuts resulting in extremely profitable deals for . . . . whom exactly? Here are excerpts from the New York Review of Books Article called The Northwest London Blues by Zadie Smith [sic] Compare that to Michael D. D. White’s article on the sale of Donnell Library posted on Noticing New York [sic] Here is a quote from his article It is almost as if the authors of the London and NYC articles copied each other and substituted different libraries, one from London, the other from NYC. 2. In 2008 Bloomberg gets elected mayor of London and with arm twisting from Quinn, gets elected mayor of New York City by exceeding term limits. 3. In London and NYC extremely wealthy people are sometimes idolized to the point of that some assume they are smarter and more worthy than anyone else simply because they have a lot of wealth. It is a problem if their word counts for everything, the rest count for practically nothing. We say everyone is worthy, no one is more worthy then anyone else. We recognize talent and respect it, at the same time having more or being smart does not entitle one to be able to take property or publicly owned assests from others. Also from the London article, “British libraries received over 300 million visits last year. In North West London people are even willing to form human chains in front of them. People have taken to writing long pieces in newspapers to “defend” them. Just saying the same thing over and over again. Defend our libraries.” And what does Citizens Defending Libraries say, Defend Our Libraries! So you have a choice. Most New Yorkers still don’t know that public libraries are being sold off, not because the city cant afford them, (the city is wealthier than ever), but because a few people want to take the valuable property, build high rises that will make a few enormously wealthier even though they are stealing from the public to do it. [sic] I hope you join us in showing that we want to stop the sell offs of public buildings and resources, it is demeaning to the public service professionals and other hardworking employees who dedicate their lives for our good and to the public who uses them and pay for them. Thank you for caring, Carolyn McIntyre Poster Comment: Mike Rivero's commentary on the article at whatreallyhappened.com Last night, the original 1975 version of "Rollerball" starring James Caan came on one of the cable movie channels. When it first came out, it was one of my favorite films, portraying a world run not by civil governments answerable to the people, but by large corporations answerable only to their investors. The entire society is structured to brainwash the people that individual effort is meaningless and that only mass obedience to the corporations keeps society going. The James Caan character, Jonathan E, by becoming a superstar in a game designed to kill those who stand out, undermines the authority of the corporate executives. But one of the most interesting side-plots is that in searching for more information about his world, Jonathan discovers that all real libraries have been closed down. Yes, you can get a corporate-approved summary of any corporate-approved reading material, but all the real on Earth books have been destroyed and the contents are saved on a single giant computer called "Zero", not unlike that huge NSA data center in Utah. Jonathan E visits this computer with all the world's books transcribed into it to ask some basic questions of how the world came to be dominated by corporations, only to find that Zero, in trying to evaluate all of the data stored in it, has gone quite mad (and lost the entire 13th Century in the process). That may be the fate of all that data in the NSA data center as well; simply too much to derive any meaningful answers from, especially since it relies on a most unreliable source of raw material, the public's often exaggerated self-portraits in social media! …”first heard of the council’s intention to demolish the library centre along with the bookshop and the nineteenth-century turrets … To be replaced with private luxury flats, a greatly reduced library, “retail space” and no bookshop.”
“offered a smaller library (for use by more patrons from other libraries Brent has closed), an ugly block of luxury flats— and told that this is “culture?” Yes. That’s all really happening. With minimal consultation, with bully-boy tactics, secrecy and a little outright deceit…Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them.” See below article. . . “the building that housed Donnell has been sold to make way for a hotel and a much smaller public library. . (w)ith the proposed library having less than half the space for public services as the old Donnell . . . questions remain about the location of some of the collections. . . More importantly, the breakup of the collections diminishes the role of Donnell as a central library . . . The decisions . . . [were] communicated to staff (and in the case of Donnell, to the public) largely after the big decisions have been made.”
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#10. To: (#0)
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The sense of peace one get from the library is quite unique. I loved to Hang at the Central Montreal library until they closed it and moved it's content away to a new location, it was quite a shock... it went from this to this Frankly, going to the library is not a lost art. When your kindle runs out of juice, gets into an accident, the screen cracks, tossed in the wash... Nothing beats a good ole book, especially when it is a first edition! ebooks are fine, practical when you want to go to bed and read while laying on your back, the pad is lighter than a book. Beyond that, can't really leave an e-book in the subway or the bus for someone else to pick up and read. Quite sad for the residents of the city of NY
Thanks for your input, SilverStorm. You came closest to Mike Rivero's film commentary about digitized data being vulnerable to loss. That could be a bigger downside than just a temporarily lost e-book inconvenience; even if not on such a massive and critical scale as the entire history of the 13th century vanishing, like he described as having happened in the Rollerball movie by super-computer malfunction. :-/ The article mentioned London, as well, so I think it's also sad for them and New Yorkers to be dispossesed of their libraries. Why aren't philanthropists stepping in to help fund those facilities, as they do for other projects of less educational and cultural value, I wonder. The pics you posted are grand. Could you, though, reduce the size of the 2nd one, please, through the Edit option so that readers won't have to scroll back and forth to see the spillover text? Just add: width="350" to end of the url path with a space before that addition, then the usual > ending-symbol. TIA if you see this in time to do that before the Edit option closes.
#21. To: GreyLmist (#11)
One of the local Librarians out here told me that they get no pension here. The Library Board is a subsidiary of the County Board. ;)
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