Re: [ARSCLIST] Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'

[vdalhart <vdalhart@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

    Our small city has one of the best public libraries I have ever been in.
It is financed by a small tax on the five school districts in the area.  The
tax is permanent and does not have to be voted on each year.  I have had a
library card since I moved here in 1971.  It just built a branch in the
southern part of the city where many new apartments and condos have appeared
over the past few years.  And it gets a lot of business.  It is open until 9
PM 4 days a week and 9 to 5 on Friday and Saturday.  Jack P.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 6:57 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Net music piracy 'does not harm record sales'


> On 06/04/04, Karl Miller wrote:
>
> > I cannot help but wonder if libraries make aa mistake by giving away
> > information, as I would suspect, that most people take that which is
> > free, for granted, and don't value it unless it is taken away, or
> > costs them money.
>
> People like Carnegie were thinking of the poor boy who had to educate
> himself on a tiny budget.
>
> Even for the not-so-poor, libraries have been a great educator. Who,
> even now, can afford to buy all the books they ought to read?
>
> One problem for public libraries is that most schools and colleges now
> have adequate libraries, at least for the subjects on the curriculum.
> Also, there are fewer teenagers educating themselves - it has all been
> organised into a system.
>
> (In developed countries, that is.)
>
> > Happily there are those that have placed great value
> > on both providing that "free" access and having that "free" access. It
> > seems that our libraries now are the internet, and our libraries are
> > archives.
>
> The Internet is handy, but the information is all very shallow, more on
> the level of magazine articles than books. Consider biographies of
> musicians, for example.
>
> Gutenberg is great, but there is no attempt to find good texts, nor any
> notes. They simply point the OCR at a 19th century edition of each book.
>
>
> > Yet even on the internet, getting too much of the most valued
> > information, costs money. It just seems to me, that the way libraries
> > operate...I think of how google can catalog the internet, and how much
> > it costs a library to acquire, catalog a book, put it on the shelf and
> > circulate it. Libraries would seem to priced out of the marketplace.
> >
> > Karl (at this point, not feeling particularly optimistic about the
> > long term prognosis for libraries)
> >
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>