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Originally Posted by roryn1
That’s fine that not everyone is like me - but as a taxpayer that owns a condo two blocks from the current downtown library I can see 60 Million going to better use - and a lot of people if not more agree with me, hence the shape of the current library. I’ve been there once and a fancy building with phone plugins and a coffee shop will not incentivize me nor my friends who are still students to hang out there when a library at the university (that’s also open to anyone) has areas that are busy to deafening quiet to read with a Starbucks - all 5 minutes away.
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As a taxpayer who lives in Stonebridge and has two children, one in high school, and who knows several other families with teenage children, I can't see much better use of $60 million. Not on roads, not on garbage pick up, and certainly not on a downtown arena.
I think you need to pay more attention to people outside of your circle of friends. My teenage daughter and her friends, who all have tablets, phones and Internet access anytime they want it, all make weekly trips to the library downtown. They get books, DVDs and CDs. All of them prefer to read paper books over using their mobile devices. Demand for paper copies of books, not to mention other services offered at the library, is not going down, as Echoes noted.
Central libraries are important to the communities they serve. There is a reason Winnipeg, Halifax and Seattle constructed new libraries. There is a reason Calgary is doing the same. They serve multiple segments of the community and offer services few others do, like free access to computers and the Internet.
I'm puzzled by your comparison of the Frances Morrison Library to those at the university. They serve very different audiences. The university libraries are academic - they simply don't carry many of the popular books that a regular library does. Nor are they family friendly - there wasn't much selection for children or teens there, the last I checked. I can't see many of the people who I run into at the Frances Morrison feeling comfortable in the Murray Building, searching amongst the journals for the latest New York Times bestseller.
This is all reminding me of the backlash from the recent Mourdoukoutas opinion piece in Forbes. Echoes, djforsberg and WoodlandCritter have made some excellent arguments for
why public libraries are still essential in 2018.