When I lived on Maui, I worked at the Kihei Public Library for a couple of years. I loved it at first. I thought the library would be where the smart people congregated. So, so wrong.

The worst of it was that the library system had discovered they could make money renting DVDs. No kidding, they actually set up racks of DVDs for rental. The rental rates were low, $1 per week per title.

As the service proved more popular, and thus lucrative, the system got greedier. They devoted increasing amounts of floor space to DVD rentals. Books were getting pushed aside.

One day, a family came in and said they wanted to get first library cards for all of their kids. They had 5 or 6 kids with them. I was pleased to make the cards, thinking I was helping introduce the kids to the world of reading. As if.

As soon as they all had their cards, the whole gaggle of them made a beeline to the video racks. When the family returned to the circulation desk, they all had stuff to check out, and not a book among them. The library, that wonderful repository of humanity's collected knowledge, had devolved into a low-budget Blockbuster knock-off.

How very disappointing.