$200 is a totally unattainable sum of money for many, many people, often and especially for those to whom the library offers the most benefit -- those who need help finding education, internet access, and a safe/dry place to exist.
That's a separate discussion; I didn't propose that a card be required just to enter the library, and that this card require a deposit. It's just for borrowing materials to take somewhere else.
By the way, if you need a safe/dry place to exist, and the library is it, why would you need to borrow books to take somewhere else? Books also need a safe/dry place to exist!
If you can't put down a $200 refundable (with interest) balance, how are you maintaining a place where you can take the books?
Oh wow. You really have no idea how a huge number of Americans live.
Also, even homeless people are allowed to borrow books from a public library, in fact! But, no, there are many many people who struggle and hustle and have a place to live but don't have an extra $200 to leave sitting at the library.
You don't need to be ashamed that you literally don't know any of them, assuming you live in the USA, America is a really segregated (and I don't just mean racially) society. It's not your choice or fault. But you could be aware of it, believe me, to ask that question you have no idea how a good chunk of the USA lives.
(But also... can you imagine any business that required a $200 deposit to have an account with them, and how that would effect their business? Like imagine grubhub or blueapron or something. Even people that can afford $200 really don't want to begin their relationship with a business by giving them $200 to hold. Occasionally a 'business' which someone really has no choice but to use, like the electric utility, gets away with requiring a deposit. The mission of a public library is serving as many people as it can, a policy that drastically reduced the number of people interested in using the library would be a huge failure for the library).
If you think that everybody with a place to live has $200 to spare, as you said, then you don't understand how many Americans life.
But anyway, I'm glad you're not running any of my municipal services, and am glad that you (hopefully) aren't my neighbor!
So, okay, you _know_ how many people couldn't afford the $200 deposit, and don't see this as a problem because you don't think they deserve library service?
I'm sorry, I misunderstood your original point, or I wouldn't have bothered talking to you.
> am glad that you (hopefully) aren't my neighbor!
So it's OK for you to have standards: someone who merely doesn't subscribe to the whole white, liberal, upper-middle class socio-econo-political guilt-ridden value system is not fit to live next door to you.
But a library must not have lending standards that even smell of having any socio-economic entanglement.
You may do well by taking a look at some statistics on poverty in the US. There’s a significant chunk of the population who can keep a book dry but don’t have $200 to just sink into this imaginary library deposit. The interest is irrelevant, you’re asking them to choose between “get books” and “buy food”. All to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
I was in the middle of typing out a response, but looking at your parallel comments, the fact that you outright just don’t think people living in poverty are worthy of using a public service suggests this root node has bottomed out.
It's not that, but rather, this thread has basically been steered by various individuals into revolving purely around this issue of some extremely poor not being able to put up a deposit. I'm not interested in that angle at all; the idea isn't conceived to keep those people from borrowing from the perspective that they are specifically a problem (which they are not). People who can put up the deposit cause problems; it is designed for them, not as a wall against those who cannot.
It takes little imagination to see that the scheme could be shaped in ways to accommodate the very poor. E.g. there doesn't have to be a minimum deposit of $200; a substantially lower deposit like $20 or $10 could some borrowing privileges. Book or two, not twelve kind a thing. Plus any number of other mitigating solutions.
Memberships would not require a deposit. Like to log in to an Internet terminal with your library ID would not require one. Lost library cards could be free as well.
Needless to say, this would be completely ridiculous outside of America. If I think about libraries in, hmm, Austria or Japan doing anything this, I just have shake my head, no.
There is a broad population segment in America that has no respect though.
