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Public Libraries Trading Quaintness For Cash
theodp writes "To help nourish lean budgets, public libraries are increasingly eyeing the e-commerce used-book market as an alternative to the long-standing community tradition of the local book sale. Abebooks reports a tenfold surge in public library clients over the last three years. The payoff can be handsome. One library group boasts of getting $250 for a few boxes of 'miserable, horrible stuff' and another $110 from a World War II vet for a book about his Army regiment. A public library in Texas auctioned 300 items on eBay to help plug a budget hole. And a Seattle suburb moved its annual library sale of some 80,000 books to Amazon, citing expediency and extra cash as motivators."
This sounds like a good idea to me. Why not put the books out there where supply and demand takes hold? If they can get more money by selling to broader audience, more power to them.
And here I've been helping fund them by bringing back their books after they're overdue and paying the fines. Turns out I could just buy the books from them on eBay. Who knew?
Why not consider BookCrossing too? Free the public library books!
It's just a BloJJ
Maybe if we gave the libraries more actual funding they wouldn't need to turn to good old-fashioned capitalism to raise the funds they need to stay current.
We desperately need a physical storage medium for our knowledge. Scrolls hermetically sealed in DARK plastics would seem to last a looong time to me. Or perhaps a digital medium similar to the GOLD tablets the library of congress is thinking of.
I don't see any reason for libraries to go through the enormous trouble of organizing a local sale just to keep a handful of patrons happy. If they can get rid of them online, more power to them.
My friend works in a used book store. He is also an obsessed bibliophile. Anyway, he ran into some hard times and had to sell a lot of his books. They were mostly trash that he would never read anyway. He put them up on bookfinder.com and got on average about $75/box of books (about 50-70 book/box) with some books going for well over $100. I remember thinking as he was doing that "Man the library could make a killing on this type of stuff" Too bad I never followed up on that I could have been a "consultant" ;)
I really enjoy books, and my budget restricts what I can buy new so I frequent library sales, now I can do that from the comfort of my chair...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
This sounds like a brilliant idea to me. I have a friend who theorizes that the function of technology is always to "remove the middle" somehow, and it's easy to see how the Internet "removes the middle" of the commerce chain, by more directly linking buyers and sellers.
Sure, there may be a loss of quaintness, but if the gain is that more people are getting books they want at prices they like, and libraries are getting more money to get new materials, who's really loosing out?
I've got a wheelbarrow-full of musty old books I bought at a library sale, if anybody's bidding...
If this means people like my friend's father no longer fill their house with discard-sale books like "1958: A Year Of Changes" and think that makes them distinguished, learned individuals, I'm all for it.
And it's a good thing for us book lovers too.
More used books available online, but especially more OUT OF PRINT used books...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
To sell used books on Amazon, a private individual generally has to type in the details of their normally small inventory, then create some make-shift packaging to ship it to the new owner. This is a big disadvantage compared to the local garage sale.
In comparison, libraries are on the other side of the equation. They have a hassle of moving large numbers of books around to try to sell them physically locally, but already have all the book details in electronic form.
This means that a library can not only just use Amazon's AWS services to load all their available titles directly into Amazon's online used book database using XML over http or SOAP, but can use the outputs of sales information to take the titles out of their systems and automatically print-up shipping information for the new owner.
In this case it's easy to see why libraries would be flocking to data fed book sales in droves, especially when you add in the factor of obscure books finding the "right" buyer from a much larger customer base, versus the usually limited local audience. Those advantages more than outweigh the extra costs of shipping.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
But books ... there's a certain romance to browsing piles and piles of old books, never knowing what gem you'll find in the next shoebox.
I miss the huge "Friends of the Library" booksales in Ithaca (at one time, the largest used book sale in North America): for ten bucks, you could stagger out with shopping bags full of stuff.
Now, living in New Mexico in the middle of nowhere, I do appreciate Amazon. And I do understand that public libraries need to make a buck, because rich people need their tax breaks more than they need a thriving community around them. But I'll be sad to see the used book sales go.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
e-commerce and books.
How geekier can you get?
I bet that they even sell old UNIX books...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Sounds good to me. In all the examples given the books ended up with people who will really enjoy them, as oppossed to the normal clearence sale method where people often just grab something random that looks like it might be interesting, and half the time it just ends up in the dumpster or used book store anyway. On top of that the library makes some money which helps it make more books freely available to the public.
There is the rare case where someone local will really want a book, so perhaps they could be given first preference, but all in all it sounds like a win-win to me.
How does a library sell online the 00's of books typically seen at a library book sale ? It seems the act of cataloguing and offering them for sale, then packaging and shipping them would be onerous, unless you involve a middleman, in which case a good chunk of the margin goes away. Maybe for the special cases they describe it might be worth it, but I can't see the average library selling too much of their junk like this. Not to mention the fact that the books may well have had glued-on card-sleeves, may have had taped-on spine labels, and may even be rubber-stamped, all of which are going to ruin the value of many collectible books.
Maybe this wouldn't be an issue if education, libraries, and other intellectual infrastructure was being funded at levels accepted as a minimum elsewhere in the industrialized world.
One thing to keep in mind about those quaint old books in libraries is that many of them are older reference books full of incorrect or nearly-useless information. Much of this stuff is just wasting shelf space and rotting away, and the books would be better off in a private collection or a museum. The way I see it, better the library sell off old encyclopedias full of outdated geopolictical and scientic information and buy current, useful books, than for a kid researching data-storage technology to go to the library and not be able to find a book on the subject among endless shelves of twentieth-century remnants.
There is very good justification to provide public libraries with public funds paid for from general government revenue-- that is, for the population as a whole to support public libraries.
There exist two reasons for this: academic and economic. I consider increasing the level of education of the population (that part of the population that uses public libraries at least) to be a justification for government spending.
However, some people do not agree with a purely educational justification. The second justification is economic. Public libraries are a comparatively cheap way to increase the skills people, which makes them more valuable to a knowledge economy.
hey, i paid good money for that stuff....and just so you know, it's NOT 'miserable, horrible stuff': it's great, high quality pr0n.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Ebay ended real garage sale bargains.... and now if libraries start posting online it will be the end of the $0.50 hardback bargain book.
My mom bought our first encyclopedia from a local library for $15. Not that encylopedia's will be sold online or are even useful nowadays, but you get the point.
On the other hand, its great for the Library system I guess, as public funds are obviously lacking (that same local library was shut down less than 10 months ago).
But on the other other hand, why weren't these invaluable books (such as the WWII diary) kept in the library itself and made available to the public??? I never donate books to the library, because public libraries (at least the ones i've been to) have a policy of not incorporating donated books into their collections.
My family donated a set of classic childrens novels to the local library (which we knew they did not currently have available for public borrowing) thinking we would be helping the community's youth, but instead we found our donated books on the book sale shelves being sold for $0.25 and $0.50 a piece. We ended up buying all of the books that were left, back, and never donated books again.
Our local GoodWill has two 'outlet' stores.
Basically these are large warehouses where the stuff that didn't sell at the regular GoodWill store ends up in large bins and is sold by the pound. We call it simply 'The Bins' and it has spawned an interesting sub-culture of it's own.
It's a great place to go look for books (books are seperated and put in their own bins so you don't have to claw though clothes to find them) and lots of eBay/half.com sellers go there to buy books for 25 cents each (50cents for hardbacks). When new book bins come out it's a frenzy of books flying as the book sellers elbow each other for position. How do I know? I visited the book bins last August and September to make money to live on.
Now, GoodWill has gotten wise and they pre-screen the books that go into the bins for sale on various online outlets, so it's not quite as lucrative visiting the bins anymore.
I've been to plenty of local library sales and not only do most people simply ignore them, but less 10% of the books are sold.
My experience has been otherwise. My family has been involved in organization, setup, and cleanup of the local library's book sale for as long as I can remember. I'd have to say, as a sort of wild guess, that if "only" 70% of the books offered sell, we consider that a poor sale.
I don't see any reason for libraries to go through the enormous trouble of organizing a local sale just to keep a handful of patrons happy.
I can't speak for all libraries, but at mine, the book sale is entirely run by a volunteer group called the "Friends of the Library." The sale costs the library essentially nothing as far as money, time, or labor are concerned.
In the public library I work at, the offloading of books goes to the "Friends of the Library" group which seems to handle a bit of the funding (the parts that don't come from government, that is) They'd have a local monthly book sale for anything they can't/don't keep, then redistribute the funds for the betterment of the library. Modernizing machinery, billboards, supplies for the children's section, etc.
:)
From what I know of the members of the "Friends" where I'm at, they're not very computer savvy, and I'm not sure how they'd handle maintaining stuff with e-bay and amazon. Also, while it seems like a good marketplace, there's the additional burden of storage space. How long do you keep an item for sale before you realize it won't get bought and should be "recycled" instead? On a local sale, it's easier to decide. With a global audience, people tend to wait out a bit longer than they should.
In the long run, though, any good way to raise funds for local libraries is a welcome thought. Oh...and visit your local library.
Good article, As much fun as it is to be able to just walk down to a book sale, it makes much more sense to do this sort of thing online for both the customers as well as the library.
However, it was the Seattle public library which moved its annual book sale to Amazon starting this year, not a suburb.
people who actually use libraries would have to bear the cost of having the books availabe (through membership fees, donations, selling old books, whatever). I honestly don't think I've used a public library in the last 15-20 years (I'm only 27)...and I certainly don't think I should have to pay for something I never use.
A modern day witchhunt.
I don't want my library to be 'quaint'. I want them to have a good selection and low cost to taxpayers (me). I see this only as a benefit.
A) Throw the books out.
B) Have local book sale, make a tiny bit of cash.
C) Use eBay or Amazon, make a lot of cash.
Where is the loss? This makes absolute sense for everyone concerned, including the locals, who get better books in the library.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
... or the Baltimore Book Thing, which is about as close as you can get to P2P without a computer.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I just picked up "Dreamweaver 4 Bible"
and "Fireworks 4 Bible" with unopened CD's still in the back, ONE DOLLAR EACH.
The library sold them off because no one was checking them out. The retail on those books is $50 each.
The books are in virgin condition.
Though I am A Linux man, I regretably confess that I am using a winbloz 2k box on the side to develope two commercial websites for customers.
(Don't ask, long story..)
I find excellent bargains in the library all the time like this..
I don't know...e-commerce and *e*-books?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The example given does not really support the claims, does it? $1.66/book is hardly worth the effort.
.... Since January, the Friends of the Boston Public Library has raised $10,000 selling 6,000 books online . . . "
"These are books that would sell for $1 at the book sale, maybe. Online, the average is $15 to $20," Haran said.
Cheers, Nostrada
I've found that over the years buying just about anything online, within reasonable shipping charges, is much more efficent than going out.
Recently I was looking for a book from my youth. Not knowing the name, but having something of an idea of what it was, allowed me to locate the ISBN number - punch that into google, and find 4 bookshops across the US (+1 one in the UK) that carried 3 different editions of what I wanted. With shipping, it cost me $10.
Overall it took about 30 minutes to locate it, which I considered much better than driving/calling around town, repeating the same thing over & over again, having to induldge in mindless conversation about it, and if I do find it - pay all sorts of fees to have them import for me.
There is also the human factor when buying in person, like overcharging me to death, should a keen salesperson realize just how bad I wanted to buy that book/product-in-question. It also works vice versa by allowing the vendor to get the maximum amount of money at fair market value for the product they are offering, without having to deal with people trying to negiotiate for the sake of negiotaiting.
Why shouldn't the libraries get the top dollar for their books? They're perennially short on the crispies and use it for the benefit of the community.
The Law of Falling Bodies
At first this idea annoyed me, as I've found some wonderful books at the Oak-Park Library book sale these last few years.
Yet I did see several dealers scouring for valuable books and hoarding them under the tables. I'm all for cutting these middle men out.
Everyone seems to be missing the point. The libraries are selling the books rather than putting them on the shelves!
They do this because of commercial pressure. If everyone donated their old CDs and videos to the library, it would be unnecessary to rent or buy any of the older ones; you could borrow them. Somehow the people who want to corrupt the system, apparently publishers, have gotten control over the libraries. Have your ever noticed that the CDs and videos in the library are never the latest albums and movies? Certainly by now some family has decided not to let their children watch "Finding Nemo" any more times.
Everyone posting is so willingly believing that all the donated books are ones no one would want to check out of a library. But that's not so. For example, there are many books I would donate if I knew I could check them out later.
However, the librarians of the Multnomah County Central Library (in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.) have told me that putting a book in their system costs $30, and somehow it is cheaper to buy a new one! Over the years I have often mentioned the illogic in this. But all of them continue parroting the same line.
Consider the doctrine of first sale, in which you are allowed to do anything you want with your legally purchased copyrighted material, if you do not make a copy. Publishers have corrupted the doctrine of first sale so that copying into RAM to listen it or view it has been considered an illegal copy.
BTW if you're interested in information technology you may want to check this out. There's also several other full-fledged LIS news sources on the Web.
Having libraries make these books available is a clear violation of the intellectual property of the authors and publishing companies. When people just log on the internet and have the book they want shipped to them without paying for a copy from the publisher, they're basically stealing that book from the author who wrote it. If the BAA allows this to continue, soon there will be no books at all because authors won't be able to feed themselves.
paintball
Online book sales go for those rates due to supply and demand. When enough of those books (or garage sale items) make their way online, will the supply overwhelm the demand and the price will bottom out again?
Three weekends ago, I went to my library looking for the 2nd book of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. (I have vols 1 and 3 from 2nd hand bookstores.) They didn't have it.
Two weekends ago, I went to the library and saw the book on the BookCrossing table, so I grabbed it. Later I noticed where it had been donated from - my local library.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Most major libraries have had used-book areas for decades now. So they go ecommerce. How 1999.
Library sales are a major source of a lot of the dealers already on amazon. The books are going to end up there anyway; if the libraries can sell them directly, I say more power to them.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
And how is this surprising at all? We sit here and talk about how advanced we are getting. How advanced our society becomes because of our endeavors.
;-)
We all know it is only a matter of time before libraries are only accessible via the internet. So why not make enough money to buy "new" and up to date books.
When was the last time you "frequented" a library, I have not since I was in high school. Then again I knew about the "digital world" long before the 1995.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
I have no problem with libraries selling extra copies of some 50's pulp fiction to gain a buck.
However, I hope they are really scrutinizing about which items they auction off.
Around here (Berkeley, CA) the libraries are a repository of historical documents, interesting maps that were donated by other government agencies, etc. The City needs them, but uses them very rarely (like in some property dispute that goes back a long ways). I'm facinated by the local history in this area, and use the maps and books to track down interesting factiods.
An antique map of Historic Berkeley or San Francisco is worth a pretty penny to a collector. I really don't want our local library to sell our heritage to the highest bidder, for the same reason I don't want the US Government to auction off one of their copies of the US Consitution.
I'm sure the libraries are pretty scrutinizing now, but what about in 20 years, when the practice of auctioning off library items is a well accepted practice?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The real disturbing trend is that libraries are subscribing to periodical databases instead of building thier own hard copy or microfilm ones. This means the library is at the mercy of the periodical database owner rather than owner of the physical documents.
Rarely accessed obscure journals, newspapers, documents will eventually be dropped from databases and thus not be available to anyone at any cost.
A secondary issue is the case of someone claiming copyright ownership of public domain material because they scanned it in and serve it on web pages.
Uh, no. The King County Library System (outside Seattle) switched to Amazon, much to the dismay of dedicated book sale patrons (including me). The Seattle Public Library is continuing their physical sale, as much for the sense of community as for the money.
Public libraries are selling books to the public? To old vets who just want to find out about their regiment? That's twisted. The books should be available in libraries until they fall apart from years of use. And then, they should be restored, and made available for a few years more.
Having taken a stab at selling books on Amazon, I doubt the library book sale is going away any time soon. Most books on Amazon that are more than a couple of years old sell for $2. Now, take into account the time it takes to list the books, package the books, answer questions, handle returns, go to the post office, periodically re-price your items and you probably send about 10-20 minutes on each book you sell. So, about $6-$12 dollars an hour - not so great. The libraries might do well selling only the most valuable books online and dumping the rest for a quarter a piece at the book sale.
For the most part what happens is that a library will buy twenty copies of a best seller when there is a long queue for the book, then sell the best sellers when the demand dies down.
You are correct in realizing the danger that online sale pose to the repository portions of the library. The natural library cycle dumps best sellers at the bottom of the market. The big money is in the hard to find books and out of print books. Out of print books can sell for more than the original publishing price.
There is a big danger that local politicians might see the library's repository as a cash cow and start selling off the older books. This would be a big loss for the community. This is probably the main reason libraries have not pushed selling books for fair market value.
Putting a book in a library collection is not as easy as taking it from the Donations bucket and putting randomly on the shelves. For the book to be useful, it has to be cataloged, which means not only entering the title and author from the title page, but figuring out where to shelve it in the library's specific collection (some libraries may be content to throw, for example, all programming books in one section, while others may wish to seperate the Perl books from the Python books, and the MFC books from the Linux kernel internals books), and figuring out what subject headings to use. (I've seen the binder containing the canonical rules for English-language cataloging -- it's decidedly non-trivial.) Amazon and Google have done great things to increase the availability of knowledge, but it still takes a well-trained human to figure out the optimal metadata for a book.
(It still boggles my mind that Amazon refuses to do the Right Thing while searching for authors -- if I click on the "William Gibson" link while looking at, say, Neuromancer (not an affiliate link, don't worry), I end up at a search page that shows me not only books by William Gibson the sci-fi author, but Lord of the Flies (which was written by by William Golding and illustrated by Ben Gibson), and books about William Shakespear written by someone with Gibson somewhere in the name, and all sorts of outrageous results that no respectable librarian would be caught dead with. But I digress.)
In addition to the cataloging, a book must also be properly protected in order to not disintegrate prematurely. Most (if not all) of the library books I've checked out have at least library-grade clear tape protecting the cover and the spine; publishers offer higher-strength library bindings for many books as well. This protection costs money, both in terms of the staff time (and training) and the materials used.
All of this costs money -- perhaps not nearly as much as the US$30 figure quoted above, but definately significantly above US$0.
There are shortcuts to the lengthy acquisitions process. Some book distributors who sell books specifically to libraries offer MARC records (the canonical format for exchanging library catalog information) on a CD they ship with the box of books. These distributors also have access to higher-strength bindings and automated processes for securing and labeling a book to library specifications. All of these methods work only with new books, though, which is why it may in fact be cheaper to buy a book new than to move a used donation through the acquisitions process.
Your train of thought is typical of a cynical youth who has no idea of how libraries actually work. Nice try, though.
First of all, there is little or no commercial pressure to keep materials out of libraries because of fear of lost sales. That's too politically dangerous for any publisher -- of books, periodicals, or even music or film. No one would dare try it, because being caught would be PR suicide, as well as against the law. There are laws that protect libraries from this kind of pressure. The biggest hurdle to getting material is always cost, which has to be justified in terms of benefit to the library's membership.
Second, donated materials are a touchy issue as well. As you might imagine, there is great concern over who's doing the donating, and why. Political propaganda? Commmercial propaganda? Therefore all materials, donated, bought, or whatever, must fit into the librarian's preconceived master plan. Not only must propagandizing be prevented, but the appearance of it must be prevented too. So only a fraction of what is offered can be accepted. Libraries are important stewards of free speech. Part of that is playing umpire, and maintaining a healthy balance of viewpoints.
And with donated material, there's always a surplus of the most popular stuff. So most donated material gets sold, hopefully to the library's benefit. eBay and Amazon greatly facilitate this process, and can raise far more money than book sales ever did.
If there ever is commercial pressure, it will be against the selling of used materials competing with new book sales. Many a stink has been raised already with used CD and book stores, but as you've noted, there's nothing the bigcorps can do about it. Attacking libraries for this would be PR suicide too, so I wouldn't worry about it.
I have situations where the librarian said the library needed the book, but that they could not accept the donation of a copy from me for adding to their collection. The library would sell the book.
I'm a book collector (and reader) and on the MANY occasions that I went to library sales, there would always be a small cadre of used booksellers grabbing up everything potentially interesting and adding it to their stock, both online and off. Unless you were aggressive and quick, the chances of being able to find something interesting was minimal and I eventually stopped bothering. It's the same reason I stopped borrowing books from libraries. The most interesting ones get stolen or are marked "reference" and are not loaned out.
I even knew of one unscrupulous bookseller who would volunteer to help sort the books the night before so his partner could swoop in and grab anything of value ahead of the pack.
Some libraries charged $3 - $5 dollars per book on the first day to give people who actually wanted to purchase books TO READ (remember reading books?) a chance. That would scare off some of the more virulent booksellers, or at least make them more picky. I found some amazingly rare things at those sales.
Mod me +1 Nostalgic if you like, but I can't stand buying books online. You pay a hefty handling and shipping markup... and you lose out on the experience of being surrounded by old books that you can actually touch.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
Pardon me, Turd, but you seem to require the services of a professional proofreader:
there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know, we also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know
Plz fix. KThxBye.
When I was a grade schooler we used to make a weekly trip to the local library. Each week one of the boys would borrow a book called "Space 2010-2150" (I don't remember the exact dates on the spine) but we all loved the book. One week they were slow processing the return and we couldn't check it out before we left the library. We never saw the book again.
Several (10+) years later my sister was going through the local library sale and found that book. She bought it for her bookstore. A few days later I discovered it in her 'inbox'. Needless to say I bought it on the spot.
The book has had a prominent place on 'my' bookshelf at my parents house ever since. I still love the paintings and history in it.
Had the book gone online I wouldn't have it.
Granted my life is probably different only in the smallest detail, but in detail is quality.
I applaud libraries for their creativity. I hope they also continue to make old books available to the community, even if at e-bay prices.
Puleez. Call it what it is.
Public Libraries selling assets for cash.
While they're at it, they may as well sell off the buildings, the contents and the staff.
There's not much "public" left in the public library then, is there?
Of course! Why hold a government library to the unrealistic standards of being financially responsible when we can just force the taxpayers to cough up some more money to cover their inefficiencies?
What makes you say libraries are financially irresponsible? My own public library is very responsible. I don't see layers and layers of administration; they just have a head librarian, a reference librarian, a children's librarian and assistant, and a few hardworking assistants. Basically other than some of the head librarian's time, it's 100% service all the way on staffing. The rest of the money goes to acquisitions, public Internet access, conservation, utilities etc. I've never seen any money spent on the bizarre ego gratification projects that private sector CEOs and managers constantly saddle their companies with. The library knows its mission, how to accomplish it, and how to do it efficiently.
In short, I wished my private company worked this well.
1) reduce operating expenses, lessening it's burden on the taxpayer, or
2) EXPAND operations at the same cost to the taxpayer.
I don't know about your town, but in my town the library is not some kind of independent taxation entity which determines its own budget. It's budget is set by our elected officials, who don't gold plate the institution by any means, but respond to the town's demands for certain minimal standards of service. One of the chief demands is for extended operating hours. Our library is open six days a week and most weekday evenings until 9PM.
Despite living in a fiscally conservative, Republican town, our library is strongly supported, even while recently we have had to cut police and fire protection, close schools, increase class sizes, and require fees for extracurricular activities and sports. It is viewed by an overwhelming majority as a critical public service, even though we have very easy access to a "big box" book store that has an espresso bar. Not only does the library house an excellent collection, provide interlibrary loan privileges, it also has copies and archives of public documents and plans that working people can examine during extended hours. It's a critical part of civic life for which there is no private sector alternative.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I issue I see here is that the books that will be worthwhile selling (ie - make money) are the books someone wants to read. Basically - the more popular a book is, the more money it will make for the library. Why I find this bothersome is that the only books libraries should be getting rid of are books that ARE NOT in demand. They should not be taking a book that is desirable and making it harder for me as a user to find. This is backwards logic to me.
I have been trying to expand my personal library. Because my fields of interest are a little eccentric many of the books I want are long out of print. Thanks to online used booksellers I have been able to get the books I want, and I have noticed that many of them are former* library books. This service is the sort of thing the internet is great for. As a young professional I can build a complete technical library much easier than if I had to do it the old fashioned way. The library gets more money than if they had just sold it for a dollar to some local patron who thought it looked interesting enough to be worth a buck. And the book has a much better chance of winding up with someone who really wants it.
It's like a matchmaking service for books and readers instead of romantic couples.
* I guess someone could just check out books under a false name and sell them, but 1) that seems like a lot of trouble for little return and 2) the libraries usually stamp them as having been disposed of... though it's not like a book thief couldn't just make up his own stamp.
Wait until
(a) you have kids who want to read books and watch movies, and you're already strapped for cash because it costs a fortune to raise a family; and/or
(b) someone in your household gets laid off, and you need to start trimming back the entertainment budget.
Then the pennies you pay toward the library via property tax start to look like a real bargain.
This may seem like a great idea now, but wait until a large number of libraries catch on. With a flood of books, prices will inevitably fall, making this less profitable. Sure, rare books will still have value, but all the crap out there will go back to yard sale prices.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
Look, I know where you're all going with this. You say that resources should be paid for by the people who use them. Fine, let's put it to the test then. I propose that we put tollbooths on all roads to make sure that the people who use them pay for them. All downtown parking lots should be pay & display. Why should the taxpayer subsidise your motoring habits?
"Hold on" I hear you say, "roads are a vital resource that must be free at the point of use if they are to serve their purpose."
Well I think you could make a stronger case for libraries being free at the point of use.
I never use Interstate 680, but that doesn't stop the taxman from repairing it with my tax dollars.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I think that most of my best "finds" have been from random shopping at library book sales and old-school book/junk sales (or is that "old-school book/junk sales", I'm not sure where the hyphen should be in this case).
A number of years ago I bought a couple of years worth of "Art in America" magazines (when pop art was "the op-art wave of the future") that I still enjoy browsing. That was from the Pueblo, CO, public library.
I also bought a first edition Voltaire (some obscure thing) with notes in French in the margins that's just beautiful. That was at a Kearny, NE, bookstore, crammed to the rafters with paper.
And other stuff, too.
But I wouldn't have bought any of these treasures online, regardless of the price. Sometimes it's about love of books and learning and not just the cheapest copy of something you have to have this week.
"But the walls aren't getting any further apart, and the ceiling isn't rising ;-)"
Oh, yes it is.
Anyway our library at least is getting around the problem by contracting out to an electronic publisher for books available via the internet. You DO have to be a state resident to gain access (like some universities, and yes this is a school town). Also there's electronic databases.
Let's get this straight. Public libraries have to sell their books to continue operating. This is totally absurd. Is there an endpoint? What happens when the money from the book sales run out? Then they sell more books? Is there any editorial decision about which books to sell? This could constitute a type of censorship. The bottom line is that it is simply outrageous that public libraries should be underfunded to the point where they have to sell books to stay afloat. People will really have to start organizing to pressure their local communities into paying more to maintain the libraries.
Ah, my bad, I thought that the SPL canned their sale this year as well. Of course, if I wanted to be pendantic, I could just say that the KCLS is the suburbS of Seattle rather than a suburb but that would be, well, pendantic.
...of what is ever increasing in value and formerly accessible to the public into the hands of an elite few in trade for something of ever decreasing value.
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I LIKE POO
Just a interesting piece of information: the King County Public Library is the largest public library system in the US.
I worked for them for 10 years (one of my first serious jobs) and helped with some of the book sales. They were very large operations when I was involved and got much larger over the years. As I understand, one of the non-financial reasons for going on-line with the sale was that people were actually getting hurt in the stampede for choice items! The competion was always fierce.
If the book is free, why does it matter if the binding is strong? Also, check the bindings of your modern books. There are no weak bindings anymore.
The library has a database of records of books, already; there is no additional cost.
The cost mentioned by the librarians, $30, is a lie. Only that. They are told to tell that lie every time someone asks.
All of the responses to my original (grandparent) post are putting a huge amount of energy into exploring all the ways I can be wrong. That's why there is so little progress in the world. The abused argue among themselves, and no improvements are decided.
I have offered books that the library needed, that the librarian said was in short supply at that library, that was already cataloged because they had other copies, and have been told that it would be sold rather than added to the library's collection. The reason given was nonsense.
Excellent. That's what I want for Portland, Oregon.
There are a lot of things going on here. Public libraries by in large have always sold books which they no longer wish to keep. This is done for a number of reasons, not the least of which is space. It is simply not possible for a library to keep expanding forever just to avoid disposing of a book. However, when libraries are forced to sell items so as to meet budget shortfalls we are in worrying times. A culture that turns its back on learning and education is a culture in demise. World wide we have seen a gradual erosion of the respect and money given to libraries, as well as social services and education. The powers that be have seen fit to spend instead on the machine of war and the climate of fear which now pervades us. These are sad times indeed and will only serve to widen the gap between the educated few and the masses.
I used to buy books from my local library's used section and sell them on Amazon until they wised up and started doing it themselves. I actually made a reasonable chunk of cash (maybe a hundred a month) undertaking this arbitrage. Now, the only things I see on the used shelf are the junk titles that are so overproduced that they sell for a buck or so at Amazon.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
I have some computer books that I don't need anymore on topics like database administration and Linux system security. Sure some of them might be outdated by a few years but I'm sure a lot of people would like to read it.
My local library is doing the same thing. They're selling off books they won't put in circulation. As a taxpayer paying for library services, and as someone who's already bought the books, can anyone think of a way to convince the library to actually put them in circulation. I'd thought about a petition for specific computer books but its too hard to administer.
I don't use EBay. I've tried selling some books using adverts at universities and colleges and I've only sold a few books. My local used book store only gives $0.50 a book. That's why I want to give them to the library to share with others.
Any ideas?
From: http://www.westword.com/issues/2003-08-07/feature. html/1/index.html
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
This is what the RIAA, MPAA etc. are failing to grasp. Digital technology allows each of us to be a library, and file sharing is just that, sharing, just like the libraries do.
Think about it.
Wow! My mistake! I just checked, and you are right. I had picked "Finding Nemo" at random.
However, I've discussed the issue of having relevant material with librarians there and the basic issue is what I said. The library probably purchased all 128 copies, and has sold donated ones, judging from what I've been told when discussing other works.
...and they are indeed well educated, intelligent, and generally passionate about books and knowledge. But they're nerds to a T -- not the most creative, "with it" folks in the world -- and not the folks to whom one would look for innovation. When was the last time you heard of a librarian inventing anything, starting a successful new business, or actually *writing* one of those books they're so passionate about?
they are... voracious supporters of free speech and liberty.
Did I not say that? Librarians certainly contribute *lots* to society, but pioneers of business technology or early adopters of same they are not (and we are talking about librarians *finally* getting hip to eBay).