Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Time Check for the Philadelphia Free Library?

How Jason views the Free Library of Philadelphia

Op-Ed. Does the Free Library even know what century it’s in? by Jason Kaye.  (Philadelphia Daily News, 5/16/2012)

Excerpt:  To say that the Free Library of Philadelphia is doing a subpar job at adapting their service platform for the 21st-century patron would be an understatement. There are more free books you can download from Amazon.com than from the Free Library’s website.

You'll need to pay for 50 Shades of Grey

Not to mention the fact that Amazon offers a larger catalog of books to purchase than the Free Library has to check out.

The library bureaucracy has parallels with the VHS tapes that are most likely collecting dust at your local neighborhood branch: They take up precious space and have over-extended their stay in the system. The current library administrators have proven time and again to present a short-sighted yet costly vision to the Philadelphia community.

VHS and DVD holdings, an alphabetical sampling

Guess I leave it to the Bushrod Branch Library manager, for example, to determine whether or not that single shelf of videos -- or however they're displayed -- is taking up precious space.

Knowing next to nothing about the Free Library of Philadlephia, I'm willing to cut Jason some slack, but his VHS analogy causes me to wonder if he's prone to overstating whatever case he wants to make.

Retiring Guy needs to put on his detecting cap.

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