Yum & Yuk

Interesting article from the NYTimes about a private company that takes over failing libraries (including my much beloved Jackson County Library system). As to the questions in the article about whether people will still recieve good and community-based service once the library is run by an outside company, I can say without a doubt that the staff (and volunteers, of which my mom is one) remain local folks who are very committed to the library and the people it serves. It's not staffed with corporate drones all of a sudden. I definitely don't know enough to have a solid opinion about the issue, but I do know that the entire County was about to be library-free until this company took over, so it's hard for me to feel like they are a horrible idea across the board. Ideally, such involvement from a private company wouldn't be necessary, but when it is, I would much rather see a publicly-run but open (and much-used, in the case of the Ashland library, left) then a closed public one...