[ilovetv]

Originally Posted by forznoles

ilovetv -

I have to disagree completely. In the case of Borders (now bankrupt and gone!) and B&N, their goal is to mazimize profit by having customers buy as many books as possible. Therefore, more books for more people to buy!

In the case of LSSI, they will receive a fixed amount from Sumter Co to run the operations, regardless of number books checked out, patronage, etc. Books, in the case of LSSI, are a cost to be minimized in order to maximize profit.

COMPLETELY opposite concepts! In the case of those for-profit bookstores you mentioned, more books mean more profit - yes. In the case of LSSI, fewer books means more profit. And if you believe the profit motive will be the driving factor for LSSI, why do you think there will be more books and expanding inventory, when actually fewer books will mean more profit for them?

And let's touch on another subject of censorship. Library usage is completely personal and private in Sumter Co - you can go online, go to the Tax Collector, Property Appraiser and Clerk of Court websites, and find out in seconds how much your neighbor's house is worth, when he paid his property taxes, what else he owns, and when was his last speeding ticket, his original mortgage amount, and whether he's been arrested. You can NOT find out what books he's checked out or whether he has overdue fines - that's private. How do we know that LSSI doesn't send a quarterly report to the Federal Government that details everyone who has checked out a book on guns or Islam? I'm not saying they do, but I'm saying that information will be in the hands of a company out of Maryland, that may not have the same privacy protections that our local government has....

On the above statements I highlighted in bold:

- Though Borders went bankrupt, all the stores in the midwest I saw closed were replaced by Books a Million stores.

- Go to any Barnes and Noble megastore such as the one here at Lake Sumter Landing, and you will see plenty of people there every day, reading for free and if they did not find book and materials on both the far right-wing AND the far leftwing (and in the middle), they would not go there and spend so much time reading and then maybe spending their money. Whenever I look at what people have in their hands for reading there, I see all kinds of titles and subjects, far right, far left, new age, classic literature with often tens of copies of single titles on the shelf and not checked out or reserved for months....which public libraries don't have the money to buy in such numbers.

- I consider it "censorship" of sorts, whenever I've gone to a public library to try to borrow a copy of a current best selling book, and the measly 2 or three copies are always checked out for the next 6 months! The reason people go and read and maybe buy at B&N etc. is because they cannot GET a copy of current bestsellers at the library! (Enter kindles, nooks, etc.....and then people are buying from a publicly owned stock corporation like Barnes & Noble!)

- I do not believe profit motive will be the driving factor for LSSI. They are being contracted with a contract for a finite amount of money, not a continuing blank check! Whatever profit they get will be worked into the contract and the amount of money our county agrees to pay them. And, it seems to me that various contractors would BID competitively for such a contract. We the voter-consumers are going to be right there when the contract is up in a couple of years, telling our elected commissioners they'd better hire somebody else because what this contractor is doing stinks!

- We, the public are still in control of what the contracted company does and supplies or refuses to supply according to its contractual obligations, because we VOTE for the commissioners who sign contracts with and PAY the contracted company with OUR tax money.

- During all the years our kids were in school and I did college and graduate work myself, the local public libraries, though fairly good, never had any more than the kids' high school library had to offer, and so what we would always do is go to a state university library in the various metro areas where we lived, and we would research all the public and private college and university libraries in the state if we couldn't find what we wanted on the shelves there. Then we would order books for 2-day delivery from any college/university library in the state....for free. Maybe the public does not know that state residents with an ID or drivers' license can use the college and university network and local college/university library that way, to check out books and materials.

- Why be concerned about the private contractor divulging to the state or federal government what kind of books you or your kids check out, when all public K-12 school libraries and all state university systems have and can USE or MISUSE the records of what you have done an internet or intranet search for (like seeking how to build a pressure-cooker bomb for massacre); have checked out for borrowed use; have returned or not returned and are getting charged the full price of the item for; and have ordered thru the statewide library network of all private and public colleges and universities in the state!

Why is it okay for state and federal government to have all our library reading and computerized searches available to themselves from our public K-12 schools and universities' libraries????