Are Online Library Districts Best Fit for Rural, Unserved Areas?

      You live in an area just outside the city limits, and there is no library to borrow from.  Then you look at your county tax bill.  Sure enough, there’s a mill levy for “library” that takes hard tax dollars but gives nothing in return.  Perhaps the money is going for some small book-and-mortar library that is prohibitively too far away to borrow or return books from.

      The distant library might be attractive and well-stocked, but for your own library purposes it’s nonexistent.  Come to think of it, your whole setup at home or work is online.  No question that there are free ebooks online, including Project Gutenberg.  Yes, most libraries seem to have a small part of their missions to serve online patrons, but the offerings are pitifully meager and the red tape seems endless.

    Library districts can be set up that are a lot like road districts, allowing tax money that vanishes into country coffers to be sent back to the voting districts where the funds were collected.  Often the funds aren’t enough to fund new library buildings even if a location could be found that was wasn’t “out of the way” and impossibly inconvenient.

      Digital resources like the Questia online reading service show what can be done, however, to maximize educational “bang for buck.”   Let’s face it, the free stuff online might fall short of your needs, else libraries wouldn’t be needed at all.  The good stuff can often be obtained online, but very reasonably.

      The original educational mission of the Carnegie-era libraries is being eclipsed today anyway, with public libraries looking more and more like community social places not unlike student centers at universities.

     Perhaps we should think of a way to divert tax library levies into a online-only virtual and digital library district.  Let students and working parents work from home for a change, and thus promote the American family.

     All of the people in the library district would be served 24/7.   We might find that a much wider and diverse class of patrons will come forward.

      Isn’t the online world what’s really in demand these days?  Aren’t the book-oriented people already well-served by online giants like Amazon who make used books available (to keep) for as little as penny, plus a minimal shipping charge.