>

That’s the point.
What are you even trying to say >

privatized public library... my head is full of fuck. what does that even mean? >

The public library is managed by a private for-profit company. The city pays the company to deal with everything. A good friend of mine used to work for a privately managed public library system and she said it's as shitty as you'd imagine. Employees are treated like complete garbage, creativity on the job was discouraged, etc. I'll have to ask her how the collection was impacted, as that seems to be the purpose in this story here, to rid the collection of materials that dare to treat LGBTQ people as people. >

Every person I ever met who worked for LSS was chomping at the bit to get another job. Regional managers (or some such title) just showed up at a professional meeting I attended that was a mix of library staff from city run libraries and LSS ones.  The LSS employees mostly just shut up - surprise. >

This is the  same strategy that was used after desegregation to exclude African Americans from other public facilities. >

I mean, this is pretty straightforward.  These councilmembers are the enemies of the public, and they should be ostracized and driven from the community, not through violence but by every decent citizen refusing to speak to them or their families or to do business with them, as they are the scum of the earth. >

We really are a declining nation.
We're not maintaining public infrastructure, we're privatizing public services so they're more expensive and provide less services and a generation is growing up expecting the country to get worse, not better.
But as as long as we have super rich people exploiting the system we can call ourselves the Richest nation on earth! >

The oligarchs are looting us and getting away with it. >

Are there any people with privatized libraries who think highly of their organization? >

Those that profit from them do. >

And those that don't profit from them will ultimately shut them down. No more library for the town. Yay capitalism! >

Fucking Christ it's so pathetic to see the privatization of everything. Libraries aren't gonna magically run better when you introduce the profit motive, in fact, they'll most likely run worse. Why would a for profit institution provide the free services that publicly run libraries tend to provide? Only reason I can think of is the local government would pay for them to do it. But in that case, it's probably way cheaper to keep doing it yourself than pay a company (which now can charge you whatever they want because you just sold them the only place where these services were provided) to do it and hope they charge fairly.
Privatizing essential services and not expecting an increase in cost or a decrease in quality is wicked dumb, especially when they're the only option around.
Most people who are advocating for library privateization (and especially in this case it seems) are merging their bigotry with their market fundamentalism which is horrifying. >

I mentioned this in another comment, but I used to work for a library vendor that provided collection management and development services. While many of us cared deeply about libraries and the ethics surrounding librarianship and collection selection, our managers only cared about the bottom line and encouraged us to recommend materials that were expensive or not a perfect match, just to get rid of inventory. ETA I wouldn't be surprised if systems using our services spent more than they would have doing collection development in house. >

To another well-connected contractor who makes ~~bribes~~ campaign donations.
Just another fuck-over-the-gullible-public Republican scheme. >

So is this culture war just a facade for businesses to come profit off public services? >

It certainly seems like it! I'm sure that the same is true for what is happening with public education as well. >


Now the existing library employees' jobs are at risk, with a Dec. 15 letter from the city informing them they would no longer be city employees once the contract takes effect in late January and they are not guaranteed to have jobs with the company.

I wouldn't be surprised to find there was a clause in the sale contract that required them not to rehire any of the librarians who stood up to the city council. >

I fail to see how a private company could provide a usable library for all citizens of the community. Why would there be any investment in anything that makes a library attractive?