Libraries are doing it to themselves

Brett Bonfield writes in the Library with the Lead Pipe blog that, by allowing eBook aggregators like OverDrive to license, rather than sell, eBooks, and publishers like HarperCollins to put restrictions on how eBooks are used (and how long they can be used before they expire), libraries are making the same mistakes that they did by turning abstracting and indexing over to companies like Elsevier. He says that libraries are abandoning the First Sale doctrine and fair use. Bonfield writes "We are 'paying for stuff' and we are 'sharing it with our community,' but unlike before, we are not actually buying anything."

Bonfield gives examples of alternate models that give libraries more control over their eBooks. The problem is that all of the models still depend on the cooperation of publishers and eBook platform providers. In addition, at least one of the models he proposes, Sneakernet, is in direct violation of some eBook reseller licensing agreements.

Patron-driven library acquisition could hurt some university presses

Department store magnate John Wanamaker is quoted as saying "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." Some librarians feel much the same way about their collections--and they're starting to do something about it. According to Inside Higher Ed, library inventory research suggests that as much as half the holdings of university libraries never circulate. To cut down on waste, 400 to 600 university libraries worldwide have implemented patron-driven acquisition (PDA) strategies, in which they get access to eBook vendors' entire collections but are charged only when patrons actually use the eBooks. Consultant Joseph Esposito expects the number of libraries using PDA strategies to double in the next 18 months.

For example, the library at Grand Valley State University in Michigan started using a PDA program from Ebook Library in 2009. That year, library patrons used 6,239 eBooks, but only 343 of them were used enough to trigger an automatic purchase. Grand Valley paid Ebook Library $69,000, but if it had purchased all the eBooks that were skimmed, it would have paid $550,000.

So, if libraries shift to a model where they only pay for titles that they actually use, how will that affect university presses, for which a significant amount of their output comes from scholarly monographs that are rarely read? Esposito estimates that approximately 25% of university press sales (which total $320 million) go to libraries, or about $80 million in sales. Roughly 40% of all library book sales in an average general research library would be eliminated with a PDA strategy in the most extreme case, which would result in $32 million in lost revenue for university presses, or 10% of their total sales.

Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources and Collections at the University of Utah, said the following at a panel at the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting in Chicago last Tuesday: “When you describe the current situation as a partnership between libraries and university presses, that makes it sound very good and noble. Here’s another way of expressing it. University presses publish books that are no freaking good to anybody, libraries buy them and put them on the shelves, where they sit and are never used by anyone, and with the money that we used to buy them, university presses publish more books that are no use to anybody. The question becomes what should be the criteria according to which we discriminate. Should it be on the basis of what our patrons demonstrably need, or should it be on the basis of what we consider to be of high quality?”

Stealth ad campaign helps to keep Troy, MI library open

BoingBoing writes that the city of Troy, MI didn't have enough money to keep the library open, so it tried to get a tax increase of 0.7% passed by the voters. A local Tea Party group inundated the city with TV ads, posters and mailers opposing the tax increase, simply because it was a tax increase--they didn't care that it was for the library. The tax increase was defeated in two separate elections. The library was able to schedule a third and final vote, which the Tea Party again opposed. This time, however, the library approached ad agency Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide for help. They only had $3,500 for the campaign.

The ad agency came up with a brilliant idea: They created a sham "astroturfing" political group and started putting signs up on lawns around the city, saying "Vote to Close Troy Library August 2nd; Book Burning Party August 5th." The signs had a link to a Facebook page about the book burning party. People in the community stole the signs; the library secretly put them back up. They even launched an eCommerce site selling, among other things, book bags (the site said "Book bags--what a quaint idea.") The "close the library-burn the books" campaign got local attention, then national and international press--and then, a few days before the election, the agency posted the real message on the Facebook page: Closing the library is equivalent to burning its books. That got a new flood of coverage.

When the election came, turnout was twice as high as expected, and the tax won in a landslide. By focusing voters on the value of literacy and shared community, rather than taxes, the library won.