If libraries are so important, why are they so underfunded?

Everything the libraries do, they do on shoe-string budgets. I've whinged about resource management and allocation, tools, people and priorities at libraries in the past, but all of that is within the realm of the hand-out from the government each year.

My brother-in-law works in a small branch of a high-priority departement, and their budget - for just their little 20 man division - is bigger than the whole yearly budget for the National Library of Australia, including wages and collection building.

Similar stories are found throughout the world; libraries gets little funding. So it follows that libraries are under-prioritised as cultural institutions, or have a lesser place in society? This is where the mysteries on the human character just amazes me, because the truth is that libraries are seen as pinnacles of modern society, as the proprietaries of human knowledge and history, on par with universities and other cultural institutions. Yet, because there is no income to speak of, libraries are seen as a nescessary annoyance in most budgets.

There are so many things I'd like to do, so many wonderful things, in the name of knowledge work, collection access, explorability, services, exposing all that information goodness we've got down in our various dungeons, but where is the public support for making that happen? Do people really belive that all libraries do is let folks borrow them for a little while? Do people not understand the amazing position the culture of libraries have served up through human development? Don't the understand the amazing stuff we could be doing for the future of all world citizen that corporations wouldn't even care about?

I fear not.