E-Books and the Library | Soapbox Nation

E-Books and the Library

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By agentrnge , at 06/28/2011 8:18 PM to Stuff & Things

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Location: New Jersey USA

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So e-Books through the library seems like a super awesome thing to exist. Now there are 32 "standards" and DRM and all that. But I am not even going to get into that. This post is just to discuss the purchase models that libraries are considering for e-Books.

First consider a physical book. A library might purchase one or more copies to circulate. If a book circulates non stop, never sits on a shelf, and remains primarily in the hands of reading patrons, the library's purchase is well justified and worth while. Other books may get checked out once a year. It takes up space on a shelf and cost money to acquire.

Now consider an eBook title. Right now a library must purchase a "copy" of the eBook, and that copy, is permitted to be read/checked out a set number of times before another copy must be purchased. Additionally, if 10 copies are to be simultaneously checked out, 10 "copies" must be purchased, each with a lifespan of 20 checkouts.

How about this model for libraries at e-books. The library pays nothing up front, but provides a gateway to anything and everything that exists in digital e-book repositories. When a patron checks out one of those books, the library then pays a usage fee for that title per checkout. Maybe a smaller fee for books read only in the library, but not taken "out" on a reader. Maybe zero fee for flipping through a few pages on a virtual shelf of 6 zillion books.

This imposes no limits on what the library needed to buy ahead of time, no limits on how many digital copies can be available. It opens up a more immense .. library .. of content.

Tags: ebooks library

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FStick , at 06/28/2011 9:25 PM
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Unfortunately the giant variety of formats is a big problem with this. Unless you can get the entire industry to conform to one standard they hold the means of content licensing. That pretty much cuts the local library out, there is no reason to utilize a local library for digital content distribution. That's basically just asking the library to front the cost of your digital content.

If they were going to do this, libraries frequently also distribute dvds, cds, and videogames. So they would have to start providing a similiar service for all digital distribution which would be prohibitively expensive. Everyone in the district would want to constantly check out tons of digital copies of books, movies, cds, and games.