From: David Groenewegen <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:03:42 +1100

Any discussion about "will libraries stop people from buying books"
always reminds me of this Tom the Dancing Bug strip, about "Plucky
Melvil Dewey":

http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2000/08/26

David

David Groenewegen
Director, Research Infrastructure
Monash University Library
Box 4, Monash University,
Victoria, 3800
AUSTRALIA

[log in to unmask]
@groenewegendave


On 12/11/2013 12:04 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 18:49:09 -0500
>
> I was reading the Charleston talk of the estimable Bill Hannay, who
> appears there each year in Ann's popular "Long Arm of the Law" session
> to update librarians on current legal cases.  This year he focused on
> the Apple price-fixing and the ongoing Google books cases and set me
> to thinking . . .
>
> The first sale doctrine and the protection it gives libraries in print
> space is a thing of beauty.  Libraries can buy a book and lend it a
> hundred times or until it falls apart and the world is a better place.
>   But it might seem that there is a downside.  The hundred borrowers
> didn't buy the book -- so should we count that as economic cost to
> publishers of having the first sale doctrine?
>
> It would seem that publishers think so by their behavior in e-space
> and their evident horror at the thought that anybody would be lending
> e-books.  First sale doesn't apply because they don't sell, they
> license, so they can make up the rules, and the rules these days
> mainly exclude borrowing or put a very high price tag on the book that
> will be borrowed.  But consider . . .
>
> 1.  If I read a library book without buying it, it doesn't necessarily
> mean I would have bought it otherwise.  Perhaps I was thinking of this
> because I read a library book this weekend that I'd been handling in
> bookshops on three continents and two languages for a year and finally
> just borrowed and read.  I was resisting that purchase.  So the lost
> sale per borrow is some small fraction of 1.
>
> 2  But libraries buy lots of books that get limited use or no use --
> *or* at least no use that would have led to a purchase.  Amazon sent
> me by mistake this week a second-hand copy of *Critical Essays on
> Edward Albee* pub. 1975 deaccessioned from a public library in a far
> western suburb of Chicago.  It was in *mint* condition.  That was a
> sale to the good for a publisher.
>
> 3.  I sat in the Georgetown library today admiring a book that I've
> known of for years but underestimated; admired it so much that I went
> ahead and purchased it from Amazon on the spot.  That's another sale
> to the good for the publisher.
>
> So my easier question is:  is there a way to quantify the economic
> impact libraries have on sales of books that takes factors like these
> into account?  Are libraries not in fact a net plus?
>
> My harder question then would be:  is there a way to apply such
> thinking to assuage the fears of publishers trying to sell e-books and
> introduce a little more rationality into the marketplace?
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown
>
> (And no, I still haven't recovered all the Google Play books that
> evaporated when I dared to open my iPad in Singapore in August.  The
> Google Play app is, by my own experience and that of the people who
> review it in the app store, just plain broken and Google has lost
> interest.  They promised me they'd fix it, but then just faded away.)