Libraries

While scanning a recent Men's Health magazine I noticed a short article that promoted the concept of buying books from our local libraries (www.librarybooksales.org). This article quoted US President Franklin D. Roosevelt as calling that libraries are "essential to the functioning of democratic society."

The writer of this article, Kyle Western, went on to advise readers to "instead of buying from Amazon.com check www.librarybooksales.org first................" So Mr. Western -- it is more noble for citizens to buy books from the local library (a little capitalism by our local librarians) instead of a corporate entity like Amazon.com? The public libraries that President Roosevelt celebrated in his quote were primarily built by one of the USA's kings of capitalism -- Andrew Carnegie - via his foundation's philanthropic activities so let's not show favoritism here. In fact this library website you mention can easily become a seller on Amazon.com as one of their affiliates thus getting public libraries in front of a HUGE online audience via Amazon.

Perhaps the next generation of public libraries will be funded by today's capitalists such as -- Google, Microsoft, Exxon, and others who work everyday to please their consumers and make a profit.

Wealth builds libraries not good intentions Mr. Western.

Todd