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posted by martyb on Monday September 16 2019, @08:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the today's-borrowers-are-tomorrow's-buyers dept.

In July, Macmillan CEO John Sargent outlined the changes in response to "growing fears that library lending was cannibalizing sales." On September 11, the American Library Association (ALA) started circulating a petition in hopes of pressuring Macmillan to not go through with its plan, which is scheduled to go into effect in November. "To treat libraries as an inferior consumer to the general population, it's the wrong thing to do," said Alan Inouye, director of the Office for Information Technology Policy at the ALA. "Libraries are generally held as amongst the highest esteemed institutions in the community."

"Allowing a library like the Los Angeles Public Library (which serves 18 million people) the same number of initial e-book copies as a rural Vermont library serving 1,200 people smacks of punishment, not support," librarian Jessamyn West wrote on CNN. She also points out that Sargent's claim that apps let people check out books in states and countries where they don't live "betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how public libraries work." There are a few that let you pay for a library card regardless of where you live, but not many. Digital Trends reached out to Macmillan for comment but did not receive a response.

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/macmillan-e-books-library-waiting-period/


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  • (Score: 1) by CheesyMoo on Monday September 16 2019, @09:34PM (2 children)

    by CheesyMoo (6853) on Monday September 16 2019, @09:34PM (#894827)

    and I haven't read hardly any of them.

    I like the idea of digital books, lots of the obvious benefits have already been stated in this thread.

    But curling up with a laptop or kindle is just not the same as a physical book. Luckily my local library has a pretty great interlibrary loan system and I can get physical copies of most titles that I want. I will tear through 1000 page novels in less than a week if I have a hardcover version. If its just a pdf or ebook... well its still just collecting virtual dust on the hard drive

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:42PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:42PM (#894829)

    It's a nice idea. But I also like the idea of a microSD card holding up to hundreds of thousands or millions of ebooks. A library on a fingertip. You won't read 1% of the contents, but you can pull up anything you want in seconds.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @11:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @11:19PM (#894872)

      I already have all the books written in my birth language; just waiting for somebody to finish the task for English.