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My friend Nick Reville once said something about public libraries that has always stuck with me. “If libraries didn’t already exist, there’d be no way they could ever come into existence now. Can you imagine telling the publishing industry that the government was going to pay to set up buildings where they gave away their product for free?” That’s as good a summary of our current political-economy as any. So I read with interest this commentary on TomPaine.com about how at a time in cuts in public services, libraries have become the shelter of last resort for those with nowhere else to go.