Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
e-commerce and books.
How geekier can you get?
I bet that they even sell old UNIX books...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
How should a six-year-old girl who uses the library pay for it then?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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
By ratting out her friends to the RIAA, of course.