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.)