Libertarians vs. Libraries
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market libertarian thinktank best known for advocating homeschooling in Michigan and being sued on extremely dubious grounds by a Michigan teacher's union, now wants the state of Michigan to stop funding public libraries. "Libraries need not be public entities...."
This question has come up before, and I'm no closer to resolving the philosophical conflict between politically libertarian ideals and my love of libraries that don't try to hardsell their customers on the latest hype, carry only the highest-volume-selling items, summarily dump "unsold" backstock, or do any of the other less savory things that commercial entities do. ("Buy three Harry Potters, get a Nicholas Sparks free!") Or restrict their users to members of certain social/economic classes or organizations, as a private organization would be able to do.
It's unclear to me whether Mackinac's proposal would also eliminate services like the Michigan Electronic Library, a state consortium-purchasing plan that makes an impressive number of electronic databases available to individual state residents as well as libraries. Most rural libraries would be unable to pay for any significant number of these, and as small individual purchasers, what kind of bargaining power would they have in a database market that is rapidly being consolidated and dominated by a few very large corporate players, a market in which new entrants to the business are highly constrained by copyright laws?
It's also unclear to me whether Mackinac's homeschooling followers around the state would be pleased to have their public libraries, a potential major source of educational materials, have to cut back their operations.
I doubt that this proposal will be taken seriously outside of the MCPP's core team of ideological True Believers, but still....
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1 comment:
Jill @ 1:38PM | 2004-06-11| permalink
I rather think the idea of getting rid of public libraries is appalling (as is my spelling). I use the library a lot now, much more than when I was younger, and I would be lost without one. Taking that away from everyone, not even just the homeschoolers, would be a serious mistake. There is so much information that could be lost by making them private book collections. Because I assume that is what they want to do?
That's my two cents worth - if it's even that much.
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Felix @ 2:33AM | 2004-06-13| permalink
Welcome to the ongoing chaos that is the outflow of my troubled mind.
To be fair, I think the MCPP is a fairly insignificant fringe group in Michigan politics, and I don't think their suggestions will be taken too seriously.
This specific proposal from them doesn't explicitly demand the abolition of public libraries, it just wants the state to stop contributing funding to them. Of course, this would radically reduce the resources due to libraries in rural areas and small towns, especially if the MEL database access and other state consortial programs that provide online catalogs and so forth were abolished.
Their statement that such programs should be funded by local groups seems a little bit grudging, especially since the line about "libraries need not be public entities" appears in the same paragraph.
Obviously I agree with your assessment of the need for libraries, and not just because I work in two of them. Libraries made me what I am today... for better or for worse....
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