Why Privatization of Libraries is a Really #$*$@(*@ Idea

Making libraries into ‘Amazon Stores’ would degrade society.

Earlier this week, in a column on Forbes, professor Panos Mourdoukoutas advocated for the privatization of public libraries. In order to save taxpayers money, he argued, these temples to knowledge and learning should be replaced with… Amazon Stores.

If you felt a slight tilting in the Earth’s axis this weekend, a sense of being somewhat displaced — that was Benjamin Franklin, advocate of the importance of libraries to a functioning society, spinning in his grave.

In his zeal to assault society’s ready access to services and information in order to save himself a couple of bucks come tax time, Mourdoukoutas made several key mistakes that even a seventh-grader would have avoided. First, he failed to back up his argument with any evidence that libraries are indeed in need of urgent replacement. Instead of data and facts, we get such pithy statements as: “Some people have started using their loyalty card at Starbucks more than they use their library card.” Where are his citations? Where does he call out facts and data — any facts and data — about the actual health of libraries in this country?

Libraries provide more than just books, of course. At my local library, just down the…