Our public libraries are underfunded and used as a punching bag by conservatives. Libraries have very limited shelf space and must constantly prune items from the collection. If a movie isn't checked out for a few months, it gets sold for like 50 cents and replaced with whatever is currently in demand.
Most public libraries don't have the resources to archive materials. That's mostly down to academic and specialist libraries, and the library of congress.
I’m in Illinois; under state law libraries exist as independent taxing bodies - the only way to underfund or otherwise interfere with them is at the ballot box, and it would take years of concerted effort by at least 60% of the local population (indicating that this is really what they want).
I have some family in Indiana; their libraries are funded and controlled at the county level to maximize what they can do cost-wise and to ensure that rural farmers also have access to all the resources. That structure also makes it much harder for goofballs to interfere.
> I do know they tried to keep an archive of all public Twitter posts for a long time
That was the result of a specific deal Twitter made early on (itself a marketing stunt, of sorts). It doesn't mean the Library of Congress is generally in the business of archiving DRM-ed media on streaming services.
Comparing size without considering population will only lead to bad conclusions. Could you imagine someone claiming cancer deaths in Germany aren’t a problem because it doesn’t have near as many deaths as the US, it’s not even close? Sounds silly, right?
The US is reportedly 62nd in the world in libraries per capita. [1] Given the US has more wealth per capita than most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund our public library system is fairly obvious.
> Given the US has more wealth per capita than most of the world as well, I think claiming we underfund our public library system is fairly obvious.
This is only the case if you think the proper level of funding is a function of population size or wealth instead of whatever is required to obtain sufficient results. If you're looking for results, it seems the proper level of funding would actually scale with population density (sparser areas require higher funding per capita to provide the same access).
I think you can make a case for that sort of model, but I don't think it's "fairly obvious".
Mentioned elsewhere, but books in circulation (overall and per capita). Also, in the US you can get almost any book from elsewhere sent to your local library at no charge.
What measure are you using for "largest"? The US is 3rd in the world by population and 1st by GDP, so in absolute terms it's to be expected that they would be "large" in many categories, simply by having more people and money. (And then there's geographical extent.) The relative (per capita, perhaps) measure is more salient.
Based on books in circulation (overall and per capita). Also for anybody who isn't familiar with interlibrary loans, check it out. In the US you can get access to almost any book around the country sent to your local library. The system is amazing.
If you mean the library of Congress sure. If you mean the most libraries not based on a quick google (https://www.quora.com/Which-country-in-the-world-has-the-mos...). But I guess it depends on what you mean. I am genuinely curious as there are several ways of looking at this.
Also, the person above could have been talking about compared to days past. I can tell you the libraries I had access to when and where I grew are less funded (many closed), but again depends on where and what you’re comparing against.
Most public libraries don't have the resources to archive materials. That's mostly down to academic and specialist libraries, and the library of congress.