I hope everyone made it to the library on Saturday
New hours for Minneapolis libraries go into effect today; all libraries are now closed on Mondays. On the plus side (not that I can really think of one), all the community libraries have the same hours now, and they’re all open on Saturdays. Prior to today, only about half of the neighbourhood libraries were open on Saturdays. Our showpiece, the new Central library, also closed on Mondays, is open four hours a week longer than the community libraries, opening at 10am on Mondays and Wednesdays, instead of noon like the rest.
I knew I should’ve gone to pick up my books on Saturday instead of waiting for today.
Related posts:
Whooptie-do. The hours still suck.
In the business world, this would be not maximizing return on fixed assets. Think blockbuster would make a profit if it were only open these hours? Why should the library be any different?
This whole thing is a boondoggle as big as the stadium.
The hours sucking was kind of what I was getting at, but maybe I was being too subtle. Yes, all libraries being closed on Mondays is rotten. Where’s a Carnegie when you need one?
Did anyone consider this before they built that big, ugly monstrosity of a new library (not that the old one was a beauty queen…)? Was it really so necessary to build it that it’s worth closing libraries and drastically reducing hours?
The hours reduction and the rest of the current budget crisis has nothing to do with the new Central Library being built or any other capital improvements to the community libraries.
From the Minneapolis Public Library:
On November 7, 2000, Minneapolis voters approved a $140 million referendum for a new Central Library and improvements to all 14 community libraries.
http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/referendum.asp
It has more to do with the reduction in Local Government Aid, upon which the library system relied for a large portion of their annual budget.
In short, the money used to build the Central Library was only to be used for building the central library.
…but couldn’t they have instead had a referendum to, say, keep the libraries open?* My point is that the money came from somewhere, and they can’t really go back and ask the citizens of Minneapolis for money NOW.
*I realize that they didn’t have a crystal ball that would tell them that their funding would be cut, but you’d think that’d always be in the back of their minds.