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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: 3525
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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#3. To: GreyLmist (#0)
Public Libraries are - here's a surprise - sustained by tax money. New Yorkers - here's another surprise - do not like to pay taxes. With very pressing economic concerns (such as repairing bridges that have long been held together only by a coat of paint), and an unwillingness on the part of the taxpayers to be bled any further, and, I might add, steadily declining public usage of the public libraries (in favor of Googling at home), municipal govts are trimming back on the public libraries. For years - at least two decades - the public libraries in many cities have been anemic. They've been forced to cancel subscriptions, to forego purchases of new materials, to postpone repairs and upgrades, and, finally, they've been forced to trim their staffs and their hours of service. At the same time, most of the same cities have never been generous about facilities for the homeless or the elderly, so in a lot of instances, during the day the public libraries turn into outpatient waiting rooms, where the homeless, the lonely, and the demented simply stay dry and warm. That further discourages serious readers from coming. In the case of the Donnell Library on 53rd Street in NYC, it's already been shuttered tight for nearly FIVE YEARS. That's five years in which it got no magazines, no new books, no nothing. If it flung open its doors today it would still be mostly useless. But it's very valuable real estate, close as it is to Lincoln Center; the city could get a pretty penny for it - maybe use some of that money to help the remaining libraries.
Honestly, Shoonra, would you have argued all that the same if the topic was taxpayer funded Holocaust Studies facilities/museums being converted to high priced real estate? I think not, even though more people might choose to Google from home than go to one. I could be wrong but don't think the public was even given the choice to vote on whether or not they wanted to continue maintaining their financial and cultural investments in these public library properties. Seems to me you are claiming that public owned property should be made private for the benefit of the few who are much more financially endowed -- forfeited to maintain instead the plutocratic-oligarchs' decrepit money-system monstrosity that is the actual problem of disrepair and uselessness for the downtrodden masses of society, not their libraries. Take whatever time you need to re-evaluate the situation, if you care to, and then get back to me on this when you can. Perhaps your perspective might be less Scrooge-like if you looked at it from a more public and cultural point of view than that of plundering profiteers.
Most municipalities have opportunities for the public to express itself on such matters as library support. What has happened in the NYC area - I know from friends who work in the NYC Public Library system - is politics, a good deal of it racial politics. For example, the public libraries in some black neighborhoods are spectacularly underused - sometimes because it's worth your life to walk a few blocks in that neighborhood, sometimes because hardly anyone (even kids) has any free time to spend at the library. It would make sense to close down an underused library and just hope that the few enthusiastic readers in that neighborhood will take the bus or subway to the nearest surviving library. But no, the NAACP and some other pressure group will play the race card; the fact that library building itself might not be safe doesn't matter - that library must be kept open -- close down some other library, which means one that actually gets more use and possibly in a white neighborhood. Even if enormous crowds show up to keep a library open for the hearing on libraries, an even more enormous crowd will show up at other hearings to oppose any tax increase, to advocate for budget-cutting, etc. Which means that the library must be trimmed back (shorter hours, smaller staff, fewer new books, etc.) no matter how much demand there may be for its services. I know of one county (at least) where the public library budget is handled by the School Board; the available money goes first to all the schools, what little is left is allowed to the libraries - and sometimes only if they promise to buy books that the schools ought to have bought. The public libraries are put at the very end of the line of public services with their begging bowls.
I agree with you, Shoonra, about the dismal state of public libraries in NYC. ( It's not too different in California cities). Racial politics and the library department being the low man on a city's budget distribution totm pole are in play and the fact that taxpayers are tired of and frankly, angry about any new increases in taxes to support public sector salaries and bloated pensions. In SoCal it made the news that a retired public librarian was earning a $225,000 annual pension - are you friggin' kidding me? Also the ease and speed and reasonable prices of buying books from online stores either in print or digital format makes a trip to a public library unnecessary. And the current "culture" one often finds hanging out at public libraries these days - like the mentally ill, homeless, and the weirdos using the libraries' computers to watch porn - is a turn off for families. I used to love going to the public library in years past but not the last 10 years - primarily because of the user culture and lack of new books and limited hours of opening.
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#5. To: Shoonra (#3)
#6. To: GreyLmist (#5)
I could be wrong but don't think the public was even given the choice to vote on whether or not they wanted to continue maintaining their financial and cultural investments in these public library properties.
#7. To: Shoonra, GreyLmist (#6)
What has happened in the NYC area - I know from friends who work in the NYC Public Library system - is politics, a good deal of it racial politics....Even if enormous crowds show up to keep a library open for the hearing on libraries, an even more enormous crowd will show up at other hearings to oppose any tax increase, to advocate for budget-cutting, etc. Which means that the library must be trimmed back...
Replies to Comment # 7.