To my house? To read them? You’re coming across as pretty siloed in these comments.
There’s no reason why we should deny people below the poverty line the ability to read books outside the confines of the library walls. The entire functionality of the library is to be a public good, providing the products and services that allow everyone to enrich themselves. If it wasn’t, it would be a weird nationalized chain of book stores.
As myself and several other people have pointed out to you now across multiple comment trees, there are a vast number of people who have housing but do not have $200 of liquid capital to drop as a library deposit.
But to short circuit this insanity a bit: why. Why is this recommendation desirable? Can you point to any negative impact that has occurred at any library that has just stopped charging late fees and switched to “bring back old book to get new books”, as has occurred here? If not… why are you so determined to invent a new solution without understanding the library’s usage demographics, when what they picked for themselves seems to be working.
One benefit would be that the library could clamp down on the damage. Library books are really treated like shit in my area of the world. Books and other materials. You can hardly borrow a disc that is not scratched to the point of being unusable. People would think twice before damaging borrowed items, if there is a deposit at stake.
> there are a vast number of people who have housing but do not have $200 of liquid capital to drop as a library deposit.
Be that as it may, they aren't prevented from using library under this proposal. Those who care to will somehow scrape the deposit together, and their money is entirely safe provided they don't damage borrowed materials or don't return them for half a year.
The New York public library will still charge a replacement fee for broken items. Late fees don't have any relation to their policy on care of lent items. If items at your library are consistently broken, it's a problem with your library's implementation or choice of policies, not a problem with its users.
>It's a heck of a lot easier to collect that from a deposit your already have.
Not sure where you live, but almost 2/3 of American households don't have enough cash to cover a $500 emergency[0]. What makes you think they can spare $200 for a library deposit?
Here we go, another subthread about the god forsaken poor in America and the offensive $200 proposal (which is just a rough idea that could easily be amended with flexibilities and provisions for the poor).
OK, I will bite. What makes me think they can spare $200 for a library deposit?
The fact that it (1) it doesn't come up as an emergency (you can budget for it in advance) and (2) they know they can have all of it back whenever they want to take a break from borrowing from the library, and have returned all their loans. (Unless they are idiots who trash books.) The psychology of "I'm losing 200 dollars" isn't there.
Whereas a $500 emergency is just: oh no; goodbye, money!
People have a way of not having money when they have to cover some unexpected pure loss. Yet somehow they have iPhones, Playstations, designer sneakers and jeans, ...
And then again, maybe some people really, actually cannot do it. So, have a $20 deposit with more modest borrowing privileges. Or some other creative way.
>You could enumerate the fallacies and misunderstandings in order of appearance, then pick a tiny random number in that range and begin with that one.
Why would someone wish to do that? No one is required to disabuse you of your ignorance. Especially given the trollish comments you've plastered all over this sub.
70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. Many of the people who most benefit from libraries live paycheck to paycheck and libraries want to help those people and want those people to use their services. That's a major portion of the target market. These people have a hard time saving as they don't have any significant excess income. As they say, it's expensive to be poor.
It is not only unreasonable ands unrealistic to expect these people to be able to save up a $200 deposit, it is also bad customer experience and restricting libraries' market access. If libraries were a tech company any decent product owner would shoot down the idea in a flash.
a book
