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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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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."
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.
"It seems the act of cataloguing and offering them for sale, then packaging and shipping them would be onerous"
Cataloging? Onerous? For a library? Have you been in a libray? Cataloging and tracking the books is done. That is their day job. Sure the shipping and that might take some time, but probably not as much time as organizing and promoting a book sale, and then staffing it, and then carting all the unsold books where ever it is they go.
Volunteers?
On the other hand, the overhead in shipping a book to a customer is something libraries are already set up for--it's not much different than sending books out for inter-library loan, and it's hardly different at all from books that they mail to shut-in patrons.
Also, if a library is doing this instead of an annual sale, the work can be spread out over an entire year. If they only do one or two a day, it's not a big deal, but it amounts to the same thing and the big annual sale.
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.
"people who actually use libraries would have to bear the cost -- I certainly don't think I should have to pay for something I never use."
Yeah, and then poor people couldn't afford information. Wonderful.
My Sig: SEGV
Yes, but the resource is there if you ever need it. I haven't called the police in 13 years, and even then it was to report an automobile accident I saw, but I don't mind paying taxes in order for them to be there when I need them.
There are a lot of public resources I don't choose to use that I don't mind paying for. Not everything is about me.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I certainly don't think I should have to pay for something I never use.
That's one of those sorts of statements that sound reasonable at first reading, but fall apart after further contemplation:
Even if you never drive a car, the publicly-funded roads benefit you by helping to reduce shipping costs for the products you buy.
Even if you never have kids, the publicly-funded school systems benefit you by helping to improve the education of those with whom you share a society (and to whom you might otherwise be contributing more tax dollars for welfare/entitlement programs).
I'd say libraries similarly benefit you even if you never visit one.
everything in moderation
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
>Yeah, and then poor people couldn't afford information. Wonderful.
Is this not the proper role of charity? Or do you so lack in a belief of the goodness of mankind as to think that things such as libraries would exist only through compulsary funding?
Actually, in a lot of ways, your tax money is being best utilized if you never have to call the police.
"Everyone seems to be missing the point. The libraries are selling the books rather than putting them on the shelves!"
No, YOU'RE missing the point. They're CLEARING OUT SPACE FOR NEW BOOKS!! They're not selling for selling's sake.
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.
Remarkably BAD, especially in a school library. They're of curiosity value only, not something you want your K-8 to take as a serious reference work, especially the one about making paste out of asbestos.
Bottom line is that the library only has so much space to house the books, and anything that doesn't add value to the collection needs to go.
YOU'RE missing the point.
The libraries are selling the books rather than putting them on the shelves!
You know why? There's no SPACE on the shelves. Many, many public libraries are filled almost to overflowing. To add a new book to the collection, you often have to take an old book out of the collection. If that means sacrificing 'DOS 5.0 for Dummies' or the most dog-eared of the 20 copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet, so be it.
Have your ever noticed that the CDs and videos in the library are never the latest albums and movies?
I have. Would you like to know why that is?
1. Since people tend to BUY the latest CDs and videos themselves, there's less demand for the library to carry them.
2. A library's mission is to store materials that are PERPETUALLY useful, not those which are ephemerally popular. Would anyone check out Britney's latest CD five years from now if they put it in the collection today? It usually takes time before the lasting utility of a publication is fully understandable; thus the decision making process when expanding a library's collection needs to take time.
3. Something else that takes time is the very process of purchasing, cataloging, and making media loan-ready. Order a book from the distributor today, it may not get here until next week, and it'll take another day for library staff to look up the Dewey number, enter the info into the online card catalog, paste a barcode and theft-prevention strip in, and everything else that needs to be done before the book is ready to check out -- and that's only if they don't already have a backlog of other new materials that need to be processed. THIS is why it costs a library $30 to carry a book you can get at Waldenbooks for $9.50.
For example, there are many books I would donate if I knew I could check them out later.
It's very generous of you to volunteer to use the library as overflow for your own limited storage space. But is anyone else in your area going to find your books useful? If not, why should the library waste any of their own storage space on it?
Somehow the people who want to corrupt the system, apparently publishers, have gotten control over the libraries.
Do you realize how psychotic that sounds? Hey, here's a thought, maybe it's not publishers that have infiltrated our libraries -- maybe it's GODLESS COMMUNISTS! Better organize a House committee and go on a witch hunt.
Librarians are some of the most vocal defenders of your intellectual freedoms that you'll ever find, and on behalf of them I'm hurt that you would make such a wild accusation as to suggest they're colluding against us.
(Oh, and as background I worked at my hometown's public library for three years, so I do at least have a basic understanding of how running a library actually works.)
"people who actually use libraries would have to bear the cost -- I certainly don't think I should have to pay for something I never use."
Hmm. Do you think you should only have to pay for the roads you actually drive on? Do you think that people without children shouldn't pay the portion of their property taxes that support schools? Do you think you should only have to pay for the fire department if you call them? Do you think that if you drive everywhere you shouldn't have to pay for sidewalks? Do you think that if no one has robbed or assaulted you, you shouldn't have to pay for the jail?
There's this little thing called "civilized society"; it takes expenditures of public funds to maintain it. If you don't like it, then maybe you should go live in one of those caves on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Then you won't ever again have to pay for anything you won't use.
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.
>which charity?... wiccans? or muslims? ... big companioes ?
All of the above. In a free country, you and other like-minded people of whatever political persuasion would be free to form a library (or join with an existing one) and stock it with whatever books you choose. And patrons would be free to choose which library they to visit.
>do you think that you would get a content-neutral view?
Do you believe that existing libraries provide a content-neutral view NOW? If so, you're sadly mistaken. It's well documented that libraries (both university and general public) have a left-of-center political slant to their book choices. Search for Hilary Clinton's Living History and Ann Coulter's Treason, for instance. Chances are you'll only find the former.
Or try to find something really politically incorrect, such as something about whether or not the 16th Amendment (income tax) was properly ratified, or The Turner Diaries (an anti-government screed with racism and naziism thrown in). I suspect that merely searching for either will get you posted to a government list which, thanks to the recent Ashcroft laws, the Feds are allowed to collect without your consent.