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I tried, I honestly tried. The result was they have really uncomfortable chairs and the bandwidth is really bad. The silence and concentration is good but I have a headset anyway. The chairs are not really a deal breaker, but the bandwidth totally is.
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And they're paying into the library too with their taxes, poor or not.
They may or may not, but I would put money on a majority of them not paying income tax due to the large number of homeless and vagrants. But that is beside the point. Paying taxes does not give you the right to a) break the rules (surfing porn IS against the rules) and b) causes an environment that is not conducive to the intended use (i.e. a filthy environment that drives away legitimate users)
People breaking the rules is certainly a valid complaint. However, I'm not aware of libraries banning YouTube (if people are using headphones), Facebook, or whatnot.
Maybe we're lucky in Pittsburgh, but we have the best of both worlds at the main branch of the Carnegie Library. You can take a tour of where I work 2 or 3 days per week: http://www.clpgh.org/locations/main/tours/virtualtour/ It's fantastic. It was built by Andrew Carnegie in 1895 and most of it is original. I get inspiration from the 20 foot ceilings and hand made ornamentation everywhere you look. They simply don't…
The most awesome thing about the extended Carnegie Library system is how quickly I can go from seeing mention of a book (e.g. on HN) to finding it in the catalog and getting it delivered to the branch near my home. ILL is still a bit of a bother in contrast.
The combined catalog of all the libraries in the system has tremendously increased my use of the library, and I always was a library geek.
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I remember reading the Slate article you're citing when it first came out. It's a fairly amusing one, which can be summarized as: "Wealthy person without a lick of business sense opens the 'café' of his dreams, declines to do any work himself, and goes out of business." It's entirely irrelevant to the economics of the average coffee shop. First off, it's not clear to me whether the establishment the author opened was…
That's a caricature of the article. Here are some salient excepts. Which parts of them do you disagree with? [...] The logistics of a food establishment that seats between 20 and 25 people (which roughly corresponds to the definition of "cozy") are such that the place will stay afloat—barely—as long as its owners spend all of their time on the job. There is a golden rule, long cherished by restaurateurs, for determin…
Segment Year 3 Cum. Turnover
Mexican 86.81
Subs and bakeries 76.69
Coffee and snacks 70.00
Pizza 61.25
Chicken 57.88
Casual dining 53.13
Asian 51.43
Family dining 45.00
Steak 42.86
Buffets and cafeterias 38.46
Italian 35.29
Burgers 33.70
Seafood 33.33
Not sure about all the branches but the Capitol Hill branch has a decent sized meeting room which a monthly Tech Startup meetup used to use (though that was 3 years ago now).
I work out the Columbia University libraries, although I'm not a student. For $500/year you can become a Friend of the Libraries and have access to all the libraries. It's a bargain if you consider how much you would spend at a coffee shop. Also, like the article says, fewer distractions and much more space.
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"but I was completely pissed off that my tax dollars go to support that." People who can't afford a few hundred dollars for their own computer and the monthly bill for internet access? If you're looking at porn in the library, it's because you can't do it anywhere else, not because you're abusing tax dollars. Would I like the poor, the disadvantaged, the isolated to be using the library resources my taxes pay for to…
This is completely and utterly asinine. Not only does this inappropriate use cause a hostile environment for people that legitimately want to use the library, but it lowers the number of available workstations for legitimate use. Just imagine your grandmother or little sister going down to the library to do some research and being uncomfortable in this environment. Think they are going to go back? No, of course they…
Because this is the internet, the above probably seems really snarky. It's meant to be a calm, civil anecdote to illustrate my point, but I apologize if it does seem hostile. In any case, I think preventing people from using their library computer time as they see fit 1) will result in upset users due to many false positives, 2) results in more ... "big-brother-ism", if you will, 3) will cost as much money as it saves.