[Amezarak]

> This is a great way to lose what's left of public support for libraries. Going (more?) elitist is really not the way to go here.

Why should I support a public entertainment center? The original American libraries were created to make valuable and educational works accessible to the public, not pulp. Library systems all over the country have discarded most of this stuff in favor of political, romance, mysteries and kids books. Abandoning their original mission is exactly why their public support has collapsed. Nobody cares about a place for homeless people to browse the Internet or to check out video games and movies.

> But your local public library should be a way to make reading accessible to the average middle to lower class family.

"Reading" is already maximally accessible, nobody needs a library to do this. Kids are reading reams and reams of web fiction. If anything, the increasingly low quality of library fare is related to the poor reading level of Americans generally - children's books have become especially atrocious, but even pulp mystery fiction is written on a very low reading level. “We have to get them to READ” is a completely pointless and meaningless goal if the public benefit is to keep up romance fiction publisher profits.

[anigbrowl]

Speaking of children's books being atrocious, more and more people are turning up examples of AI-generated books in libraries. I know Librarians aim to screen out this sort of stuff but they seem to be missing the mark. Part of the problem is that some publishers appear to mix AI stuff into their catalogs and some libraries are just buying based on the cover and summary text.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiai/comments/1rnjx1e/i_found_thi...

https://www.governing.com/artificial-intelligence/how-local-...