Quote:
Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore
If the users are paying for the card, what's the problem? If its an issue of the service not being valued properly (i.e. membership is too cheap), that can be taken care of.
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At some level, of course, it is an issue of valuation. But it's more complicated than just paying for the card because libraries are paid for by taxes, not by user fees.
Almost $200 of my annual property taxes go to support my local library. This is a pretty good deal for me, I think. However, even if I never used the library, I would be paying that much to the library in taxes. And a lot of people who never use the library still have to pay as much as I do to the library, or even more.
(On the other hand, I pay a lot more for schools, and, having no children and being well above school age myself, I don't get any direct use from the schools. But that's how taxes work - the money goes into a large pool and is spent according to a budget set by elected representatives. I, as a non-school user, subsidize school users; on the other hand, non-library users subsidize me, potentially. (And of course we all pay for people who don't pay property taxes, or who don't pay very much).
A person who pays for an out-of-state library card is in a different category. There is no legal obligation for them to pay anything to a library in a different state. So if they do so, they are, I assume, doing this because they will gain some economic advantage by doing so. Specifically, if someone pays $50 to the Philly library, they are doing so because they believe that the benefit they will receive from the Philly library is at least $50 - it would be stupid (and weird) for them to act otherwise. However, unlike taxpayers, they don't make up for this subsidy by somehow subsidizing someone else in exchange - they don't pay for schools or poor relief or anything else that taxes are used for in the community.
So they end up being something of a net drain on the community (if not on the library).
I can't choose just to pay taxes for those things that I use, like the library, while not paying taxes for schools or poor relief. So I don't think it is in the interest of most communities to allow someone to cherry pick their library's e-books.
The libraries themselves might be in favor of this, as providing some extra revenue. But I would resist it as a taxpayer, since the result of the outside revenue is worse service for me - and of course I have to pay my library taxes regardless.