The Unavailability of Books

Why are books going out of style?

Mack Rudder, Staff Writer

It is no secret that the number of people who read books has decreased dramatically. Most people blame it on the increase in technology, with computers becoming more common in schools and almost everyone having a phone in their pocket. While technology may be one reason for the decrease in book reading, it is not all to blame for why books are going out of style. Books are simply becoming unavailable, especially for minorities and people from lower-income communities. While people might think this has not affected our own Cullman County Library System, it has affected communities surrounding us that have not

2010. In response to these budget cuts, four Birmingham public libraries are at risk of being shut down. These budget cuts aren’t isolated to only Birmingham, though, and the futures of public libraries across the nation are at risk because of this.

Budget cuts aren’t the only thing endangering the future of books, though. Many libraries, some within our own system, only stay open until 4:00 PM power like Facebook to control their social media. Facebook’s rate of quarterly increase in users has been decreasing sharply recently, and the public’s interest in products provided by Facebook has no doubt decreased in turn. In addition to the lack of interest in Facebook, Meta’s stock price has been tanking recently, which has decreased by nearly 200 dollars since last January. teen. That means around one-third of Cullman County’s population cannot have their own library card. Libraries used to be the best place to access books to read, but as they are becoming more and more unavailable, what are the other options? The most obvious answer is to simply buy the books from a store. This is not attainable for everyone, though. Some may not realize it, but our current economy during the past few years, with PEN America finding 2,532 reported cases of books being banned across 189 school districts during the 2021-2022 school year. This number only includes been as fortunate. The Birmingham Public Library System has faced budget cuts of nearly 4 million dollars since on weekdays. This means these libraries cannot fully serve all of their community, with students only getting out of school at 3:00 PM, meaning they only have an hour to use these public libraries. Most libraries also have age requirements you have to meet to sign up for a library card to check out books. The age requirement for the Cullman County Library System is six- and inflation have a big impact on, as it does on most everything, the manufacturing and sale prices of books. In 2022 alone, the cost of paper rose 14% and is predicted to rise even higher this year. Paperback books that used to be five to ten dollars are now fifteen to seventeen dollars each. These rising costs make books harder and harder to purchase. Book bans have increased dramatically the book bans PEN America could track and reported cases of book bans and does not include books that were simply “removed” from school libraries. During the 2021-2022 school year, 96 percent of these reported books were banned without following the American Library Association’s guidelines for book challenges. The increasing book bans have a huge impact and significantly reduce the number of books that students have access to nationwide.

This translates into a loss of around $700 billion in market value. Meta has invested 37 billion dollars in the Metaverse since 2019 and has almost nothing to show for it. Meta posted losses of $3.7 billion in just the third quarter of 2022. All things considered, I doubt that our reality is going to become the Matrix any time soon.