[kalcode]

You only pay a price because you are using someone else system. Which cost money. Public library are public, you also pay taxes on them. Because using it as a service still has a cost.

Google give you 1TB on data to query each month. That is a lot of data, if you need more for free collect the data over time.

But you still need a library card and if the facility gets overused they ask for a small tax to cover the operating costs.

I fail to see how this isn't considered public. Public literally just means accessible to the general public. That all. A public event can still charge a fee for entry. As long as the fee doesn't create a barrier for most the public, you know accessible to the general public.

Also if a library sold their data would it no longer be considered public? I believe it would still be considered public. User data isn't sold typically by name or email, byt activity. If a library compiled a list of books checked out and their frequency, the amount of people entering everyday etc that be the equivalent of most user data being sold. Very rare for a company to sell your actual personal data, when they do they disassociate your personal information with it.

So if the above doesn't disqualify a library from being public, then neither would this dataset that is public. If you really disagree with that then you are just trying to be pedantic at that point.