>>Paraphrased somewhat for brevity, the council's logic is, "It costs
>>money and people nowadays don't read anyway. Also, something
>>something the Internet."
>>
>
>If Millinocket offered free Internet access to all its residents, they
>might have one-quarter of an argument there. Maybe.
>
>Since, as far as I'm aware, no municipality in the United States does
>this...

One of the best counters that I'm seeing in the "what use are libraries in the Information Age" arguments<1> is the Cleveland library system's Makerspace, which includes everything you'd need to do basically anything from get a prototype up for a hardware company to record and mix an album. Including instruments.

See: http://cpl.org/thelibrary/subjectscollections/techcentral/makerspace-2/ for more information.

Also, per Adam Savage (who was invited to the grand opening) one of the things they're doing as part of that project is putting together a playbook for other municipalities trying to put together a similar thing, including "how to convince your city council that it won't cost a fuckton of money"

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

<1> Which is just dumb. We're in the fucking Information Age, maybe we should listen to people who have dedicated their lives to figuring out how to store and catalog and distribute information despite the fact that it's shitall expensive and doesn't pay for dick. But I digress.