The library is still open, you can freely enter. But now they've put "a guy" in the library to whom you can pay money and they will answer your question with the stuff they "more or less remember".

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The guy is also standing right next to the computer terminal where you can search for books, and starts telling you everything they think they know about the book you're looking up, whether you asked or not.

[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

He also broke the terminal a bit, making everything just a little bit slower and the results a little less useful. Cause he's definitely better than that thing.

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

This isn't just with projects either

I was looking at property records and property lines for my state yesterday to try to resolve a question that my mom had regarding land that she was getting.

The first two and a half pages of search results are all websites where you have to pay a subscription fee in order to get the land owner's information.

This is all information that is provided by my state free of charge via their website. I had to filter through two and a half pages before I found the original source of the information that all of those websites are leeching off.

It's ridiculous the amount of paid services that use free-to-use services, it's just they pay more of an advertising, so therefore they're the only thing the user sees.

If I hadn't already known that the state provided it free a charge to anyone who asked or went on their website anyway, I likely would have figured it just cost money to request the records.