From: Tony Sanfilippo <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 07:14:42 -0400

I had a discussion recently with a colleague working for a major
regional library consortium and we were thinking about alternatives to
ILL that might have a lower cost. I pointed out to her that two major
players in POD had very large plants in our state, and that perhaps an
alternative to ILL could involve printing and drop shipping direct to
the patron, perhaps even direct to their home or campus office. The
ILL editions could be discouraged from returning to the marketplace
(as an incentive for publishers to participate) by creating blank
template paperback covers that would be completed by metadata, and
rather than using the four color design used on the commercial edition
of the paperback, the POD vendor would print a simple black and white
cover, with the title and author on the cover and the spine, the name
of the library that triggered the purchase on the front or back, the
call number on the spine, barcode on the back, and anything else a
library might want to potentially return the print book to the
collection after the patron is finished with it.

It's kind of a pie in the sky —maybe a print version of DDA— but there
are POD vendors with print files for millions of books on their POD
servers, it would seem you'd only need to connect a few more dots to
get that platform to start efficiently serving our ILL audiences.
Maybe we could call it ILL Prime. Of course, this wouldn't exactly
help with the mailroom crisis.

Best,
Tony Sanfilippo


Tony Sanfilippo, Director
Ohio State University Press
180 Pressey Hall
1070 Carmack Road
Columbus, OH 43210-1002
ohiostatepress.org


> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 14:57:51 -0700
>
> Starting in my own condo building but encouraged by the New York Times
>
> (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/realestate/the-doormans-dilemma-what-to-do-with-all-those-packages.html?emc=eta1)
>
> I observe a national trend in package room crises.  Too many boxes
> being delivered to residences and even offices and no place to put
> them.  (If you live in an apartment building and they accept your
> packages for you, look to see where they are stashing them:  it can
> get ugly.)
>
> So then Amazon appears.  Amazon lockers and now a growing stream I've
> seen mentioned on other lists of Amazon "stores" esp. on campuses:
>
> http://www.berkeleyside.com/2016/01/15/amazon-opens-new-store-on-uc-berkeley-campus/
>
> The campus issue seems particularly to be that students don't care
> about their US Mail any more and are happy to walk a good ways to a
> central location to pick that up, but they too want their packages
> where they live.
>
> So there's Mr. Amazon, looking to solve the problem.  The "stores"
> don't stock merchandise in the traditional way and are indeed more
> package pickup with a little customer service.  Nose of camel under
> tent?  Well, leaving aside the contracts many campuses have with the
> one or two big vendors left in the "bookstore" business but that
> Amazon could work to supplant, when would we decide that Amazon
> print-on-demand is a better solution to need-it-now than ILL? Some of
> the time?  Lots of the time?  How much camel will wind up inside the
> tent?
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Arizona State University