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."

Comments

sounds like a good idea

[BattleTroll]

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.

Good for them

[exhilaration]

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.

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.

brilliant

[moquist]

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...

Re:Maybe if we ended public funding...

[EvilNTUser]

"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.