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  1. The Kinder Institute for Urban ResearchAndy Olin5 min
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    The Kinder Institute for Urban Research
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    • DellwoodBarker2 years ago

      Outstanding! I never thought about this which just goes to show how much I have taken them for granted (especially the revelatory truth of libraries being a crazy idea if they did not already exist). Legit.

      staff them with librarians, whose job is to “greet everyone who comes in and say, ‘how can I help?’ And not to judge them, not to monitor them, to respect their privacy and be decent and kind and generous no matter how much trouble that person’s in right now, because that’s their job.” Also, he added, access to libraries would be based on just one thing: being human.

      ”Which means, by the way, that the library is going to be open to everyone, regardless of their age, their race, their ethnicity, their social class or their citizenship status.

      “Oh, and people can take home anything they want,” he said. “And, to make sure that they bring it back, let’s use an honor system. And when we can take it home, they can take it home for free.”

      A crazy, radical idea, right?

      The point Klinenberg wanted to make was this: If there was no such thing as a library, and someone proposed it today, there's a 99.9% chance they and their “radical and crazy idea” would be laughed out of the room.

      But, as we know, it’s not a crazy idea.

    • bartadamley2 years ago

      Renew your library cards. Get your first library card, and take advantage of the wonderful, magical resource that is the local library.

      "If there was no such thing as a library, and someone proposed it today, there's a 99% chance they and their "radical and crazy idea" would be laughed out of the room."

      Not everyone in the world is as fortunate as we are in the United States having access to some of the most wonderful libraries in the world.