Years ago, I heard a statistic that the Dutch published and read more books per capita than any other country. This supposed fact hung around in my brain, brought forth now and then for some discussion on books and whatnot. Deciding to refresh my memory, looked it up and wow, this is apparently, no longer the case. Wondering why the change, prompted a field trip to the local library. The library had moved; no longer housed in the center of town, now located on the outskirts near a shopping center and streets of suburban housing. As it happened, the day of my visit the major renovation was just completed and the volunteers were busy trying to return books and order to the shelves. I browsed, wandered around, and noticed a chart of prices on the wall. News to me, It costs to join the library and borrow the books. An “all-in” [their term] subscription is $75 per year [euro to dollar exchange rate] and with that you may loan up to 12 pieces of reading material each time. There are less expensive subscriptions and finally if you just want to give-it-a-try for three months you pay $13.75. This was a surprise. I thought the idea of a library was to encourage reading, to make printed matter available to all. When I asked about it, the volunteers were surprised at my surprise. The good news is that children to the age of 18 are free.
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This is odd, indeed. It was Benjamin Franklin who first conceived of the free lending library, back in the 1700’s. We have had problems with local governments taking tax dollars we designated for libraries. Suddenly, libraries were closing certain days, until we demanded they must fully fund our libraries! What good are books that sit on shelves, unread? One of the great balancers of humankind, is the free education afforded by using the library’s books. Did you see the film “Good Will Hunting”? In it, he admonishes a college student going into great debt for his college education.