Comment Brick and mortar (Score 1) 105
As another poster mentioned, many or even most libraries already do things to foster community.
This idea *is* an interesting way to *force* people to interact, but that shouldn't be confused with community, which is a sense of togetherness or belonging to something.
A crucial component of this is having an actual physical, brick-and-mortar presence that enables people to interact when they want to. In a library you can choose to interact with librarians, or you can see someone looking at a book and ask them about the author. The cost of going to the library in terms of time is higher than browsing online (although many libraries let you browse online anyways), but once you get there every operation has a lower overhead. You can search for a book, go to the shelf and see the other books next to it. You can grab a few dozen books you might be interested in, look them over and then just borrow the ones you want. And all of this with a much bigger collection than any member of the proposed club would have.
I think that the identified problem is very valid, but the proposed idea doesn't solve it. Libraries are becoming less viewed as a community resource than they used to be, in part because chain bookstores are kicking their butts in that area, providing a place to read, chat, have a coffee, and even attend events. Maybe it's chicken and egg, because if libraries were better-utilised they'd probably get more funding. I don't know if that's the issue.
So libraries need to improve their current public image, from boring, dusty "whispering-only" collections of old books, to cool places to check out the latest books from your favourite author. Basically that's what the large bookstores are doing. Knowing that the library has copies of *recent* books is important, and borrowing the coffee shop idea from the chain stores is not a bad idea either!
This idea *is* an interesting way to *force* people to interact, but that shouldn't be confused with community, which is a sense of togetherness or belonging to something.
A crucial component of this is having an actual physical, brick-and-mortar presence that enables people to interact when they want to. In a library you can choose to interact with librarians, or you can see someone looking at a book and ask them about the author. The cost of going to the library in terms of time is higher than browsing online (although many libraries let you browse online anyways), but once you get there every operation has a lower overhead. You can search for a book, go to the shelf and see the other books next to it. You can grab a few dozen books you might be interested in, look them over and then just borrow the ones you want. And all of this with a much bigger collection than any member of the proposed club would have.
I think that the identified problem is very valid, but the proposed idea doesn't solve it. Libraries are becoming less viewed as a community resource than they used to be, in part because chain bookstores are kicking their butts in that area, providing a place to read, chat, have a coffee, and even attend events. Maybe it's chicken and egg, because if libraries were better-utilised they'd probably get more funding. I don't know if that's the issue.
So libraries need to improve their current public image, from boring, dusty "whispering-only" collections of old books, to cool places to check out the latest books from your favourite author. Basically that's what the large bookstores are doing. Knowing that the library has copies of *recent* books is important, and borrowing the coffee shop idea from the chain stores is not a bad idea either!
