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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/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SemperOSS on Monday September 16 2019, @09:26PM (2 children)
In some countries, publishers are forced by law to sell copies of any books they publish/sell in the country to libraries at a fixed (very low) price per book and then the publisher/author receives a (very) small amount for every book lent out. This may seem unfair to the publishers and authors but is considered essential to ensure that people, no matter their socio-economic status, have a more level playing field with regards to access to information and is supportive of a higher level of education for all people in those countries.
When I was young, I was forever reading books from the library and sometimes haunted the librarians to find specific books at other libraries, which made it possible for me to learn about computers at a very young age. (In my day, small computers were the size of a cupboard or two!) If cross-library loans were impossible, more than half the non-fiction books I were reading would not have been available to me, living in a provincial town. So guess what, as my carrier path in IT was founded in library books, I am very pro-libraries (or should that be pro-library?) in every sense of the word.
And now, over to the libertarians and anti-Social-Justice-Warriors.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:30PM
Information wants to be free.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @11:50PM
Not issues with "seem unfair to publishers" by why do you include authors as well?
After all, one of the motivations of an author is to have her books read.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0