[WEB4LIB] RE: More Library News From the State of Washington

[Daniel Messer]

"Kevil, L H." <KevilL at missouri.edu> said:

> 
> Hey, do you think we could keep the political potshots out of this
discussion list? So far the participants have taken only one side of a
fundamental issue, on both sides of which there are good people and good
arguments. Do we want to see a technical forum degenerate into a flame war?


	Heh heh heh, It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. :) On the serious
side though I have a strong urge to watch these people who always deonounce
the system try and survive without it. I'm not a big fan of taxes either, but
I don't think that we'll ever get by without them. In thousands of years, no
one has come up with a better idea for collecting money for a government, well
at least not one that actually works. The problem that libraians are seeing
are people who are so caught up in the short term, that they fail to realize
the long term is about to hit them in the face with a Louisville Slugger. And
it's not just the public, it can happen right in the library too
	I've got a friend, nameless here forever more, who does some IT work for a
different library. They got into a big debate with their superiors because,
when they needed to buy a new server, they wanted to get the best they could
afford while the admins wanted to economize and "save taxpayer money." My
friend had to explain, show figures, and generally make a large stink about
how, when you buy a new server, you don't want to spend a lot of money on it
upgrading and tweaking it only a couple years down the road. Of course most of
us know that it's usually cheaper to get a big shiny server with lots and lots
of RAM and drek hot processors and several massive HDs RAIDed together than it
is to get some midline thing that you're going to have to upgrade different
portions of in a couple years. But the admins only saw the short term
	Sure, get rid of taxes and the like, and you'll lose the library. Even that's
not so big a deal until you realize that you'll start losing police and fire
departments too. Sure you can cut costs by lowering taxes, but the bottom line
is that you have to pay the brave ladies and gentlemen of the police and fire
brigades a certain amount of money to risk their lives. Otherwise, they'll
find work elsewhere that does pay them such cash.

Dan

-- 
Mondai wa
The subject in question...
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Daniel Messer
Assistant Circulation Manager
Yakima Valley Regional Library
dmesser at yvrl.org
509-452-8541 ext 761
102 N 3rd St  Yakima, WA  98901
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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
                                         -Hunter S. Thompson
Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.
                                         -Benny Hill