“…the library’s budget for buying new materials is limited–this year, it’s $201,000–so buying digital audio books and eBooks will mean less money will be available for buying other library materials.” – Patrons can download library books, in the Press and Sun-Bulletin in Binghampton, New York.
The TeleRead take: The Broome County Public Library reportedly “is paying a Cincinnati, Ohio, firm about $20,000 a year to maintain the service.” Huh? That’s a tenth of the library’s entire acquisitions budget just for maintenance of the e-collection, and at this point the library makes available only 37 digital audio books and 787 e-books.
Yes, the library will be adding many more digital items later on. But one still wonders: Just how much of the $20,000 reflects the expense of proprietary formats and DRM? At a time when our libraries are cash-strapped, do they really want to splurge on expensive proprietary technology?
I love e-books. But I love conventional books as well, and I’m disturbed that an e-book distributor is collecting so much money at the direct and indirect expense of library patrons, taxpayers, publishers and writers. Everyone, middlemen included, is entitled to make a buck for useful labor. But isn’t there something wrong here?
Beware: New medium to replicate old level of inefficiencies?
While the present library world isn’t always a paragon of efficiency–less than 15 percent of a typical library budget is spent on actual content, far too low even considering the essential value-added services that libraries provide–do we really want the e-book version to be less than fully respectful of local taxpayers’ money? Splurging on the proprietary approach could backfire when it’s time for a library referendum and voters catch on to what’s happening.
Just now I checked the bottom of a catalog-highlight page on the Broome site to try to see which “Cincinnati” firm was collecting the $20K. Turns out to be Digitial Library Reserve, a branch of the Cleveland-based OverDrive. OverDrive has many positives such as the capablity to create very attractive catalog pages for libraries, but customers someday could be paying outrageous amounts, even beyond the expenses for the Broome system. Last I knew OverDrive was charging one-book authors $300 a year for storing their works, a steep increase from the preliminary costs. What’s ahead for libraries?
In fairness to OverDrive
In fairness to OverDrive, I don’t see this as a matter of greed alone. OverDrive, far from definitely minting money, has to cope with charges from vendors of proprietary software and the rest. Today’s proprietary DRM, furthermore, is far more complicated than it needs to be. An intelligent nonproprietary approach to formats and DRM alike could dramatically drive down costs. Meanwhile I would warn libraries against locking themselves into gold-plated proprietary-oriented solutions, the equivalent of the Pentagon’s famous $600 toilet seats. Libraries should aggressively encourage OverDrive and other vendors to try harder to keep costs down.
