Library Hate

you are american what do you expect

What an amazing counterargument! That's even if it were true... I'm actually not American. Suck it brainlet.

you're not certainly from western europe since libraries are good over there
everyone knows public services in the usa are shit btw

we look at the writer, see his nationality (books are separated between the brit/amarican/french/italian/portuguese/greek/etc lit). We have a section for sci-fi, fantasy and mistery/crime noir/pulp stuff so that doesn't get mixed with the other stuff.

More recent books are put on a table at the front of the reading room.

Philosophy, history, science, biology, physics, etc is all separate from fiction and no the writer's nationality is not accounted when we shelve those books, so if you're looking for, say, Georges Bataille, you have a copy of Eroticism in the Anthropology section and a copy of Blue Of Noon in the French Literature section.

We also have a separate room for local archives.

We put repeated books (as in, more than one copy) in the basement for donations or in case a copy gets damaged/stolen.

I've lived in North America, England, Norway, Finland and Portugal. Shit all around the globe.

I'm from western Europe and my local library has a pretty shitty selection. We only really have our national canon, and the few books we do have are subpar translations since the library insists on not having English translations but just national translations meaning some literal who translated it, often poorly.

Right but who decides which books to buy next? Do you all pick together, or is there a catalogue that each library must have, or does the library manage just decide?

>enter library
>hit with the stench of homeless people 2 steps in
>nothing but Harry Potter and Twilight on every shelf
>every computer occupied by a geriatric trying to login to AOL
>huge line to checkout with the 1 non-English speaking librarian
>turn 360 degrees
>steal a copy of New Moon
>leave and throw it into the first refuse bin I see

really? I'm from a 15k suburb in italy and the local library has like 25k books plus I can order a book from any other library in the province
I always found there what I was looking for
I assumed things like these were better in the rest of europe

I'm from the Netherlands and the philosophy section in libraries are horrid; full of all kinds of woo.
Something similar applies to bookstores; the psychology sections are horrid and full of self-help that has nothing to do with psychology as a science.

For non-fiction the library is a big miss, college has some alright non-fiction but I'm imagining university libraries to be much better.

Dove esattamente? A Roma no c'è un cazzo.

Most public libraries in the UK are shit. University Libraries are fantastic though

Most of the books here have been here for longer than the manager's been alive, senpai.

Regarding the new books that come in though? It's the manager who does it, though it happens pretty rarely (we're talking like a dozen super market paperbacks every couple months, if that).

He's also the one who orders a new copy online in case one is damaged/stolen and there's not another copy in the basement.

IIRC though, we have to at least have the copies of the obligatory books that are studied in highschool (The Lusiads, Message, Auto Da Barca Do Inferno, Frei Luis De Sousa, etc).

It's all archived digitally so it's pretty easy to know what we have and don't have and what is needed.

>25k books
shit negro, that sounds really fucking peachy

perfect description of my experience last time i went to the library. let's meet up a burn a few.

I agree with this

Education and access to knowledge isn't really much of a problem these days. Obesity and excessive healthcare costs (private/public) on the other hand is an epidemic.

University libs are fucking amazing, but even they aren't perfect.

Public libraries have almost nothing good. They're aimed at housewives and their children during summer.

Most people use libraries for the computers nowadays

WHY. WHO DOESN'T HAVE A COMPUTER AT HOME.

Most people who come here are either obnoxious old people, actual tards or Gen X cunts with their horribly noisy kids who don't seem to know what a library is. They all have their own laptops, they just come here to browse their social platforms or, worse, play loud as fuck games/watch anime (the tards are the worst with this, because they seem to think that since they can't hear themselves anymore, we can't hear their loud, disgusting breathing). They're all here for leeching internet without paying, essentially.

When i used to be a hobo, i tended to carry a laptop with me to look for oddjobs and ways of selling my shit online, so that's pretty common too (plus public libraries are very common homeless hang outs).

The negro. Hence why they believe online job applications are racist because black people can't afford a computer to apply online.

I had an African guy come up to me and ask how he can apply for a job where I work. It's not even that they don't have Internet, every has a fucking smart-phone these days. They just don't know how to use the technology.

But it's really very important that we bring tens of millions of these low-rung, unskilled laborers into our increasingly automated Western societies. I guess I can salute him for at least expressing the desire to work rather than collecting welfare, but the market is really displacing these people and it will not end well in the long run.

>I can't think of a bigger waste of our taxes.

Should've saved that sentence for last and maybe I would've read the whole post.

Sage

so real talk Veeky Forums is it possible to do some sort of small, simple, /diy/ homegrown library thing? what are the laws and shit for that?

Well you're not sanctioned to use state-backed force to reclaim your possessions when people don't return them so, good luck with that. Don't issue any of your co-op library cards to people with highly enhanced concentrations of melanin.

Why the fuck would you even want to start a library after you already have your books?
So people can steal your books and you get to have the thrill of looking for another good edition of said book?

My library experience:
>always some white mom with 20 mulatto kids who wont shut up
>90's computers all occupied by homeless/old people
>poor book selection

The best thing to do is use the interlibrary loan system, in my state you can get a copy of almost anything if your willing to wait a week.

You go to a shitty library you dumb fuck.

The one I go to have exactly zero genre fiction.

Pic related.

That's a pretty nice library, user. But we can't all live in non-degenerate shitholes.

"This is why we can't have nice things" and whatnot. My local libraries are dogshit tier, they look like they're rented out in lease spaces in strip malls, and all along bus routes. You can imagine the type of dreg this would attract.

And this is in fucking Canada.

that looks bloody amazing, damn

Every summer sound Americuck red-stater gets triggered by their shitty municipal library. You guys have never been to a real library. Florentines didn't intend the library system to be some genre fiction cuckfactory for cat ladies and homeless druggies. This is my fucking local library. It is meant to be a synergy of high art and high literature. Go back under your rock you fucking Americans.

Calgary is getting a new library next year. I have high hopes. The current one is a shithole.

Doesn't look like your library is doing you much good cus you clearly can't read.

> A controversial opinion but undeniably true

If it were undeniably true it wouldn't be controversial you genius.

The imbecility of this representative of the complete post.

/thread

>t. brainlet

Evolution was controversial but undeniable true.

Oh my fucking goodness. Look at this.

Evolution is not undeniably true. People are denying it.

>evolution is undeniably true

If it's anywhere outside of a primarily white suburb, it will go to shit fast. Doubly so if it's near downtown. All the libraries in """ethnic"" hubs" in Edmonton are fucking dumps. The one that does look decent on the outside is probably rotten inside, anyway. I was Googling for nice local public reading spaces and where someone recommended "hurr why won't you just go to a LIBRARY?" the response is that the libraries are filled with disrespectful, loud pseuds, as was similarly corroborated in this thread.

I just want to go somewhere that's quiet and has air conditioning.

Mass third-world unskilled immigration is a death sentence for welfare-state Western nations, and either welfare/entitlements or mass immigration needs to stop to prevent it from collapsing in the coming decades.

This is highly controversial, and absolutely true.

>I can't think of a bigger waste of our taxes
The taxes used to educate a retard like you was a bigger waste of money.

Vandweller here. I use the library because it's free unlike a coffee shop, and the librarians cannot kick you out even if you spend 8 hours straight here. They also don't block Veeky Forums like a lot of coffee shops do. (Ironically starbucks doesn't block it either. Some you can use a proxy, but a few places banned proxies, too.) Of course I'm the 2-3 showers a week type, and I hate the smelly-type druggie hobo with the nine thousand bags and the seven eleven big gulp soda cup. Libraries are nothing but hobo daycare centers and librarians are now tard wranglers. I actually writefag here and apply for jobs when I'm not on the chan. Most hobos either watch movies or browse their phone or sleep. Well, some people are homeless and you can't tell though, typically college students, recent grads, and vandwellers. I really think it's a problem with the violent drug-addict type hobo, because my city's central library has a huge problem with them and now 100 policemen run around the place every five minutes. It's not comfy. I wish they would have some standards of entry, like a smell test. It makes the library stink like hobo and they do weird things in the bathrooms. I saw a nigress jiving in there the last time, water running like a fountain for no reason, she was half naked and had a bag of the grocery store precooked whole chicken that was half eaten. They go there to do drugs. I wish librarians could enforce common sense discrimination as to entry.
But that would probably trigger someone's fee fees.

I use the library wi-fi to pirate books. They don't have anything here that I want to read. It's all books for old ladies or children. Which is understandable, because if they had just the classics or specific nonfiction, no one at all would come. Libraries are the truest face of our democracy, and the people want Nora Roberts and Twilight.

There are 3 libraries in walking distance of me. The white one in the rich neighborhood, the middle-class family library, or the central downtown with all the hobos and niggers.

you're lucky. smack dab in southern IL here, and the three libraries in the county have exactly dick. to give some idea of the horror, they have not one copy of Don Quixote. not in any of the three.
I have asked them to address this, and they respond that there is nothing they can do about "shrinkage" and suggest that i order through the lending process online, where larger libraries lend to smaller ones. It works all right. I don't ageee with OP, he might as well say we shouldn't have roads because the one outside his house is shit. What we need are people who aren't incompetent. Guy should work in a librarian committee and change the process by which libraries are filled. We are the future.

Rutherford library at the UofA is nice and it's quiet.
Not sure if it's technically only for students/faculty but I've never been asked to leave.

If it's a public school library, you have a right to be there if you're a state taxpayer.

Aye, I've heard the Uni library is nice but I live on the North end, getting there is a bit of a pain in the ass. That and I don't know the campus so it's a bit labyrinthine to me.

The lrt goes almost directly to the library

Fuck, man.
I'm really confised, i live in Portalegre, in Portugal, and i though that my library was lame, because nobody cares about reading here, at fucking all. But i'm listening to some of the horror stories here and it's blowing my mind how little perspective i had regarding this.

I like to work at the library because i can essentially read the classics all day and i've gotten through a lot of the canon like that, but it's honestly hard for me to even believe what fucking shitholes most libraries apparently are. It makes me mad too, i may have redneck genes and not be the highest class lad out there, but i always saw the library has a center of cultural heart of a city.

>not one copy of Don Quixote
what the fuck, seriously?
We have two portuguese copies of Quixote (one is in two volumes) and one copy of it in it's original spanish

We don't have lending here though, and lending sounds really fucking useful.

>Free Books are shit.

say it with me: F U C K Y O U!

I went to a public library in the late 2000s on a whim. The whole place was practically empty, save for the lone librarian who was working.

He was very surprised to see me at first, but was super friendly.

Pic related.

being so butthurt that he came here just to post this.
JUST TO POST THIS
oh my god.

I'm a burgerstani. People here are aliterate. "Books are for faggots" etc. Most libraries have DVDs and CDs, computers for the old people and hobos, and seating for hobos. Few people actually read. Hell, I'm Veeky Forums and I have rented maybe 5 books from the library in the past 2 years. They just have complete garbage. Like our central library had a grand total of 5 books on Roman history, and none on the specific period I was looking for. They have 4 copies of Twilight but 0 of Gilgamesh. Mainly it's just a place for hobos to sleep and charge their phones, and the hobo-infested ones have free classes on remedial shit like how to use a web browser or how to apply for jobs, which no one goes to, and the family-oriented ones have reading circles for toddlers where they sing retarded songs and clap. Culture is shit here. People only watch the idiot box. Most people never pick up a book, and on the occasion you find someone who reads, it's genreshit like mysteries or game of tards or 50 shades of shit. Big city libraries have manga, too, so teenage weebs go there. That's about it. I don't even bother with them, I'll just pirate what I want. Faster and easier.

Former homeless person here, been homeless 2 times when younger and I have to say the second point is 100% true. Thank god for libraries otherwise I would've had to stay outdoors in blistering heat and be bored out of my mind.

That's pretty much a summary of libraries in the UK.

I took a class at community college a year ago, and my ID is good for 2 years. Even the worst university library is better than most public libraries, but this is due to underinvestment in the library system (they can't really buy new books, but can take donations, and what do people donate except shit they don't want anymore), university libraries on the other hand actually have a real budget and it shows.

But of course the people who are calling for the repeal of the library system are the same who defunded it in the first place.

Please clarify by saying "Public libraries"
They're implied to be public ("I can't think of a bigger waste of our taxes."), but call them what they are.

You aren't wrong. A lot of public libraries I've been to have been pretty poor, but are good for children.

Private libraries -- university libraries being the best example -- have a much better selection, and membership usually only costs around $100 a year.

i wish it weren't true, two of the three don't even have Moby-Dick.

shit, man
Funny you mention Gilgamesh, i have been looking for the ancient classics and i fount a copy there, along with two copies of The Ancient Egyptian Book Of The Dead.

I love my libraries kid section, they have old, abridged and illustrated versions of classics for kids (War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice etc). It makes me happy because those are the books that really got me into reading.

It's just so insane to me. Just from this year, i've read 15 books from my library, i'm used to take at least 3 home with me every month.

This whole thread is really making me grateful 2bh

lmao for real?
my fucking high school (this was poorfag public high school, mind you) had Moby Dick.
In fact, now that i think about it, my high school library had a lot of the canon (most of the greeks, and most of the essential epic poems) when compared to all the wastelands you lads described.

>audacious and arrogant post
>smug nigger for an image
>an drug
were you trying to get some sort of reaction from me from all of this?
You got it.

Yes it does, and it's full of people when it goes there. I hate public transit, the people make me sick. They're disgusting loud, and ugly.

Now beauty is subjective so maybe they think I'm ugly too, but I'm damn self-conscious enough to not act disgusting or loud.

I really need to get a car. I should be saving more but I just spent several hunnid dollars on .....books.
>this is your brain on Veeky Forums

>>enter library
>>hit with the stench of homeless people 2 steps in
My story usually ends there. The amount of bums in my local library is absurd, I don't know what they're all doing there. Studying for the SAT at the ripe age of 40? Reading Nietzsche won't make you unsoil yourself, christ.

Free gyms wouldn't help. You attack the supplier when there's an epidemic like this, not the consumer. Look at the relative success of the war on tobacco and cigarettes vs the disaster that was the war on drugs

i used to be full hobo (still got the beard) and i did actually read, i read and i read and i took three books to read when the library closed but for most hobos the library is just a shelter, it's where they go to charge their fucking phone and laptops, deal drugs and get high, get drunk, etc.

Public libraries are a hive for the homeless, user.

I used to be homeless too and at the shelter I lived literally nobody read. I must have met a hundred people and they were all drug addicted morons whose whole purpose in life was to find their next hit.

I'd be interested in hearing about how you came to be homeless though. I personally suffered a bout of mental illness and had nowhere to go.

Veeky Forums charts

>a bout of mental illness
I don't know why I laughed at this. It's pithy in a way.

i came from middle/lower class family in Portalegre. Mental issues started showing as a young teenager, and the psychologist hilariously pretty much said i showed signs of what seemed to be literally every mental illness ever discovered (including ones i'm dead sure i never even showed signs of, like BPD). Ultimately, only two things were diagnosed: autism (which i still hold was a misdiagnosis) and anhedonia. I should mention i've had a history of such mental problems as a kid (sound hallucinations were the most recurring ones, to the point where i couldn't sleep) and chronic pain, specially limb pain.

My parents were a horrible couple, and i say couple and not people because they both got much, much better after they separated. My mother become much more reasonable and far less histrionic and my dad stopped being a drunk lazy fatass and went to live to the camp where he got hardcore into middlebrow mystery lit (He got this huge, 6 volume collection of the complete Sherlock Holmes). Borrowed me a bunch of classic hardcovers which was cool.

Unfortunately, that happened when i was 18, and though my childish hatred for my parents was pretty much done with (i didn't even dislike them anymore), i begun to feel the most extreme of resentment towards them for bringing me into existence.
Anhedonia got so bad that i could not feel any pleasure from anything (this is what got me so hard into reading, since nothing brought pleasure and lit and other forms of art was the only thing that truly engaged me, i could and can read straight for 16 hours), and chronic pain got worse and worse, and pleas for painkillers got repeatedly denied.

So, after planning it for a while, i just left to Lisbon with some live cash. Told my parents i was alright when i got there and that i was with a friend.

Essentially, i just begun resenting my parents for bringing me into existence so much i could no longer be around them without letting my views on them and life in general be tainted.

Where was the chronic pain?

all the doctors said it was lack of sleep, but nothing ever worked because sleeping pills only made the pain worse

i haven't been to the doc in years

i love my university library so much it is a giant ugly box of a building with everything you could ever want, and you can check shit out all summer which is so nice

it's not even that great of a university tbqh. the fact that universities have such amazing libraries gives me hope for humanity

public libraries a shit, good post

What's your health like? Could it be caused by lack of exercise and bad diet, or do you suffer from some physical illness?

extreme malnourishment, likely, i'm very, very thin (pic related, it's my hand)

I do exercise though, i walk 45 minutes three a times a day to my work and i walk my doggo also three times a day.

Well in that case, you should really try to eat. Most of the hobos I knew would live off McDonalds or other fast food. Doesn't help the condition but at the same time it's pretty difficult to get the same amount of calories on fruit and vegetables at that price. But I think in places like Portugal you can get good stuff for an affordable price.

eating just makes me feel pain. i just go without eating until no longer eating is more painful than eating. It's the same for everything else. Sleeping is painful. If i'm not stimulating the brain, blocking that pain out, just being awake becomes painful. Masturbating is excruciating and, just like with eating, i just do it when my penis begins to hurt more if i don't get some release. There's not much to do, and i've decided that a stoic approach would be better to face my situation. Being morose and lugubrious about it just makes it worse.

those bootstraps aren't going to pull themselves up user, get to it

Your brain on diabetes and high-fructose corn syrup. The post

Why is everything the American tries shit?

Their cars: Shit
Their food: Shit
Their culture: Shit
Their government: Shit
Their healthcare and public services: Shit

The only good things are their national parks, but they are ruining them too.

Can you imagine how disgusting free gyms would get after a while?

>car
>bike is $100 and makes you Veeky Forums
>car is $100 a month (insurance, repair) plus $4k upfront plus taxes and licenses plus gas plus parking
>car makes you a depressed fatass

Also I mostly agree, but there are differences in public transit. Bus is shit. That's where niggers go. Light rail is /comfy/ and mostly white. Yuppies use it. I avoid the bus whenever possible, but the light rail is a pleasure.

Get /n/ nigger.

Personal responsibility. Just let the free market take care of it, and when all fatties are denied jobs and partners for being disgusting, perhaps they will change their ways or fuck off to the trailer park. Why should the state take my tax money to gibs it to rehab fatties? Just let them be fat and disgusting until they're 40 and fall over dead.

I can't even afford enough food to get fat on. I have no pity for them. I can't even afford to eat three meals a day, and fatties eat 7 or 8 a day. Fuck them. They deserve diabetes.

Fat people take up space in hospitals and end up costing the taxpayer huge amounts of money. Unfortunately, they don't die slowly. Most die of chronic diseases that are expensive to treat and take a long time to kill you.

I used to study and do homework at my local libraries because my house was noisy as fuck. They were wonderful places. My favorite had a musty 70s aesthetic that always got my brain chugging. The other one was newer but small as fuck and close to a high school, so traffic got bad. In the four years that I did this, they both underwent terrible changes:

>Mexicans using the former as a daycare center, abandoning their spawn there for hours at a time
>homeless people looking at porn on the computers (both places)
>city government section 8s the area around 70s library, making it dangerous as fuck past 6pm
>noisy fucking high schoolers congregating at the latter after a Starbucks opened next door
>removal of most desks and tables at former to shoo homeless, didn't work, bums just took up remaining tables
>giant black families (10+) who come solely to rent movies and are loud as shit

Libraries are great in theory. In a noisy fucking world, you need a place you can go that's completely quiet, but they've mostly been turned into gimmedat community centers where the goal is to abuse as much of the free services as you can.

County tore down the 70s library a few years ago after two cases of arson.

>after two cases of arson.
Was it you user? There'd be something noble in the deed, if it were.

Nope. One of the cases happened right after the Zimzam trial though, so it was probably the section 8ers living nearby.

The one thing I'll always miss about that place is that musty smell. You just can't find that smell nowadays in most libraries.

Your best bet is to go up on the top of a rocky hill or mountain. Those loud people you just described are probably too plebeian and fat to make their way up anything that isn't concrete.

>live in a shitty east European post communist country
>live in the second shittiest quarter in the city, with gypsies and drug dealers, half of the houses were built illegally
>still have a library nearby that btfos any american one, judging from the posts itt

No hobos, no loud children, with a big and diverse collection of books that I found useful as a fantasy-obsessed kid and as an adult interested in literature and philosophy. It would be a waste of time to check each book individually, but it certainly has at least 90 books from Veeky Forums's top 100. And if a book isn't available here, I can search the database of all the libraries in the city and find it elsewhere.
USA is a fucking failure.

It seems like there are many more hobos as of late. The last 4 years or so it's been an apocalypse. I mean, I get it, rent is expensive, but so are drugs. I wish they would mix something lethal into the drug supply so they all just die. Hobos ruin everything. I've been targeted and harassed by them. One in particular has it out for me after refusing to give it money, so now there are a few blocks I can't pass through. Feels bad man.

Well, US isn't as great as it could be, that's for sure. kang negro did a number on us. Feels bad. Even our beautiful wilderness is being spoiled by sprawl. Mostly they take the good places, and soon all that remains will be the desert.

Carry a weapon. The one thing hobos don't have in your country is free healthcare. If he advances on you, make him remember what he is and that he should fuck off or catch an injury he won't be treated for.

>tfw live in NYC
>tfw can request literally any book and get it via an interlibrary loan
>tfw can take refuge in the most majestic library in the world when the world ends

only poor counties have shit libaries slav-friend, America remains rich in its better parts

That's what you get for volunteering to pay for their healthcare. Don't like it? Don't vote for a system that steals money from you to pay for fat fuck's medical bills.

San Francisco user reporting in. The libraries here are all either daycare centers for kids, or smelly and hobo-infested, depending on what part of town they're in. The collections are tiny and pathetic except for the collection of the Main library, which is decent but nothing particularly impressive. You can get books sent from the Main library to a local branch, at least, if you don't want to deal with urine stench. Luckily, we at least have Berkeley and Stanford in the area, so there are some serious collections available. For Berkeley you have to pay. Not sure about Stanford.

It costs more not to pay for it, since you can't deny people emergency service which, when the person can't pay, the cost of which is added on to local taxes.

Uh, the reason people don't go to the gym isn't cost, it's not wanting to work out.

There is already a free way for avoiding obesity and it's just going outside and walking running. Zero cost barriers to entry, just literally walk out the door and you're already doing it. But people aren't taking that option because "it's too hard".

Although some people can use the gym as a facility to avoid obesity, they really are much better served as an outlet for strength training where expensive/complicated equipment is necessary. As far as just burning calories is concerned, plenty of non-gym options are out there.

You know there used to be a time where a certain amount of hospital care had to be done charitably for the poor, but now "everyone" is entitled the health insurance meaning the insurance companies run the shebang. It's not in their interest for any healthcare to be charitable, or even cheap. As a matter of fact,
>In July 2016, UnitedHealth celebrated revenues that quarter totalling $46.5 billion, an increase of $10 billion since the same time last year
consumeraffairs.com/amp/news/health-insurance-industry-rakes-in-billions-while-blaming-obamacare-for-losses-110116.html

You sure are doing a fine job at being a good little goy for failed government policies.