> But ugh on the building rationale. Without knowing what the building was like before, I can't comment too much (e.g. if there was mold/water damage/etc.) but that does seem like an odd use of funds.
There was no library there before it was built.. Right next to city hall at a cost of millions of dollars.
Sure, cities need to build and grow but this was a terrible use of money and a decade later it is still an albatross..
+1 for your comment on children books, this is why we went and it was incredibly valuable to us.
Given most of us are technical, we all know libraries are not a good resource for current technology books and this is not my issue. My concern is a city with a very tiny Chinese population has a large collection of Chinese books.. something is wrong.
PS - my ex was Chinese and loved it because she could go there and the books she wanted were always available, there are so few people in this city who can read them..
Obviously whomever is responsible for buying books invested heavily in foreign language books for some reason?
Sounds like your town has a government/mayor that really wants to look good to their peers (other municipal/small town mayors and city council members) rather than serve their population. Those types of buildings get features in all their stupid trade magazines, etc. And then the gov officials use them to hobnob with each other.
My bet on the Chinese books is that it's one of the librarians' special interests. It's not uncommon to have some % of the buying budget set aside for staff recs (that allows for some inclusion of things people may not have known they'd like), and if the system is small enough for one person to be doing all the buying, she might have overspent on her interests.
The cynical answer would be that the librarian wants to have the books so she can write an article on foreign language collection development and angle for a job elsewhere: Very few small town librarians grew up in their small towns and it's a very gentrified profession. She might be angling for a position at the VPL or TPL systems.
There was no library there before it was built.. Right next to city hall at a cost of millions of dollars.
Sure, cities need to build and grow but this was a terrible use of money and a decade later it is still an albatross..
+1 for your comment on children books, this is why we went and it was incredibly valuable to us.
Given most of us are technical, we all know libraries are not a good resource for current technology books and this is not my issue. My concern is a city with a very tiny Chinese population has a large collection of Chinese books.. something is wrong.
PS - my ex was Chinese and loved it because she could go there and the books she wanted were always available, there are so few people in this city who can read them..
Obviously whomever is responsible for buying books invested heavily in foreign language books for some reason?