TeleRead has long called for the use of e-book technology to increase the number and variety of library books in the States and elsewhere.
Statistics on the Hampsire library system in the U.K. make powerful case for a TeleRead-style approach, which would offer both public domain and contemporary books and blend them in well with local schools and libraries.
The bloody details
Via the recent Libri study, here’s a list of authors, titles, and chances of finding them in Hampsire libraries. All three public domain book mentioned below, incidentally, are available for free in the major e-book formats via the PD side of the Blackmask bookstore in the States–a one-man operation whose completeness should embarrass library bureaucracies everywhere.
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 83%
Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man, 5%
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, 54%
Terry Pratchett, Mort 39%
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 42%
Jack Kerouac, On the Road 54%
Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party, 32%
J.R.R.Tolkien, The Two Towers, 84%
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, 53%
Joseph Heller, Catch 22, 36%
Quite relevantly, a BBC radio report includes an account of a library visit where the staffers outnumbered the actual library users. Could numbers like those above be part of the reason? Is too much money going for staffers and not enough for books? Actually I’d like to see generous spending in both areas–instead of on downtown library palaces. E-books could help free money for both content and staffers to help people absorb it, especially the poor and non-English speakers, who, like other library users, often rely on libraries for authoritative information in areas ranging from job training to health.
When book spending lags
In the U.K., more content could help reverse the horrors of the chart below, showing past, present and projected trends in library-book borrowing. Even allowing for hyperbole in the projections, the numbers are bad news for library boosters everywhere. Usage stats are far higher in the States, but if nothing else, the U.K. numbers serve as a warning against smugness as more and more families gain access to high-speed Internet connections and spend more and more time on Web sites and on movies on demand–and less on books.
