ysabetwordsmith | More on Ebooks and Libraries

Here's another article about how libraries and publishers are failing to meet reader needs, particularly in regards to ebooks.

Basically, if you aren't meeting people's needs, they will find somebody else who will. If your economic model isn't meeting people's needs, they'll replace it with one that will. If your system isn't managing the main flow of activity, it's a failure, and the real system is wherever that main activity is. What we're seeing now in the shakeup of the publishing/literature industry -- and to some extent, media in general -- is the process of consumers declaring that the current options don't meet their needs and they're exploring other options, kthxbai.

You aren't going to make money by trying to trap people where they don't want to be and aren't getting their needs met. You need to find a way to meet their needs and make a reasonable profit in the process; you need to go where the interest and activity are. You also need to treat people decently, and expect them to behave decently. If you mistreat them, they will not hesitate to mistreat you in return and you will have no moral high ground to complain about it.

I'm keeping my eye out for a subscription-based e-library where you can read whatever you want that's in the stacks without the stupid restrictions that the libraries, publishers, and software are currently promoting.

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I am the director of the public computing center we have set up within one of our local libraries. I teach a workshop weekly on borrowing eBooks and using eReaders (among a rather large breadth of digital literacy offerings). This is nothing the library itself could support- my project is grant funded. You have to remember right now things are rather awful for libraries. There is little money for anything, and that includes innovations in technology and programming. I am not saying this is an excuse, but there is a broad picture to consider. There is a huge strain on staffing as well- part of why my project exists is to move technology assistance-related strain from the circ/info desk by providing a dedicated resource. Public libraries are seeing a huge increase in usage, especially technology related, but that does not mean they are getting the budget increases to do everything we would want.

Much of the problem in regards to eBooks does come from publishers- from some insisting on a circulation limit for eBooks to just general availability. We do what we can with the budget we have. I wish I could give you more insight, but I am only peripherally involved in the purchasing end of things. I will say our queues are NOTHING like described in the article and I am a bit leery of taking most of that article to heart, but very open to looking and seeing what other information is available.

I worked as a bookseller/bookstore manager for 7 years. I am a (soon to be) published author with DAW. I am a librarian. I have seen all sorts of angles for this situation, and every stakeholder is effected on a different level. Its tricky. Painfully so.

As

laylalawlor says, we have an established idea of the library, but there is no reason it has to stay that way. There IS a move towards change in libraries, it is just slowed by habit, perception, and a very real lack of financial backing. We need to get support for libraries if we want anything to change.

>>You have to remember right now things are rather awful for libraries. <<

I am very aware that libraries are critically short of staff and funding. But it's a bus-fare problem: the more they cut services, the less people are willing to spend on them, until it reaches zero and the library closes as so many are doing now. People have to want to keep the libraries open. In order for that to happen, the libraries have to do something people care about. What people care about is changing. Either the libraries keep up, or they go down. I really want to find ways that libraries can adapt.

>> I will say our queues are NOTHING like described in the article and I am a bit leery of taking most of that article to heart, but very open to looking and seeing what other information is available.<<

You're lucky then. Maybe the problem isn't as bad in some areas; that would be good in terms of buying time to solve it before a meltdown.

>>We need to get support for libraries if we want anything to change.<<

It's usually possible to rustle up volunteers for a project if something is in it for them. Small publishers and individual authors would benefit, just as libraries would, from circumventing the Big Press/Overdrive bottleneck. The project to create an alternate stack of books for borrowing might even be crowdfundable. Minimal effort and expense on the library's part, if approached thoughtfully. You'd just need someone to oversee enough to make sure the outlined project would work for the library, and that the library would actually use it. And once it exists, it could be replicated elsewhere.

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