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（单词翻译）

You'll almost always find four public services run by local governments across America: police and fire departments, the agency that fixes the streets and cleans the sewers¹, and the public library.

Notice that we said almost always. That's because the fifth-largest library system in the United States isn't local at all.

And it's not fully² public, either.

It's a group of 14 library systems from Tennessee to California that are run by a private, profit-making company called Library Systems & Services, or L.S.S.I. This company has been given control of systems that were struggling to find enough money to stay open.

But L.S.S.I.'s latest contract, for $4 million, puts it in charge of a system in Santa Clarita, a Los Angeles suburb in southern California, whose libraries are holding their own financially.

To achieve profitability, Library Systems & Services typically slashes³ costs drastically, in part by replacing unionized workers.

L.S.S.I. chief executive Frank Pezzanite told the New York Times that a lot of local libraries are, in his words, atrocious.

"Their policies are all about job security," he said. "That's why the profession is nervous about us. You can [work at] a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement⁴. We're not running our company that way. You come to us, you're going to have to work."

Responding to outrage⁵ expressed in many quarters over the outsourcing of its three library branches, Santa Clarita's acting⁶ mayor, Marsha McLean, assured citizens that giving up control of the library was essential to cutting costs during economic hard times.

She stressed that the city's libraries would still technically⁷ be public, since the city owns them and anyone in town can still come in and check out books for free.