Re: E-books and library budgets

The other downside of libraries buying e-books is that most are prohibited
from being loaned to other institutions, unlike hard copies. This is really
starting to have a deleterious effect upon the Ohio-Link book lending
system (a system of academic libraries in Ohio being connected and able to
lend each other books), not so much in Classics, but definitely in STEM
fields. It will eventually harm ILL too.

Paul Iversen

On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 12:33 PM Arthur Robinson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> I’m a librarian (former Classics instructor), so I’ll accept the invitation
> to comment.  I’m not directly involved in purchasing e-books, so I don’t
> know as much as I should—in fact some things in this article are new to
> me.
>
>
>
> I think most librarians have mixed feelings about e-books.  They’re great
> for some things, such as reserve readings (students don’t have to come to
> the library for a book on reserve only to find a classmate just checked it
> out) and online courses taken by students who can’t come to campus.  And,
> of course, some e-books let you search the entire book for a word (though
> that doesn’t always work; a search for “Vesuvius” won’t work if one line
> ends with Vesu- and the next begins with vius).  But many patrons prefer
> print; they often ask me to order a hard copy of one of our e-books on
> interlibrary loan because they don’t like reading books on a computer.
>
>
>
> Many faculty are unfamiliar with e-book pricing (understandably; so was I
> at first).  A couple have asked me to get a book as an e-book to save
> money, and I explain that e-books usually cost far more than the print copy
> for libraries, and far more than the e-book cost for an individual.  (Same
> with L’année philologique; a professor here wanted us to subscribe to it
> electronically, though we don’t teach Latin here, and was surprised to
> learn that the annual fee for institutions was ten times what he was paying
> for his individual subscription.)
>
>
>
> Many years ago, another professor wanted us to purchase a bunch of
> e-books.  One of them was the Oxford Classical Dictionary, which we already
> owned—and the electronic version was $600 (the hardcover then cost $125),
> plus an annual “hosting fee” that we’d have to pay every year or we’d lose
> access.
>
>
>
> I could go on, but this is degenerating into vents and anecdotes…
>
>
>
> Arthur Robinson
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:20 AM DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > From today's *Philadelphia Inquirer*, here's an article on what libraries
> > pay to provide e-books.  Librarians in the audience may have comments.
> The
> > article has some relevance to university and town budget decisions, so
> I'm
> > copying the text below.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > *Ebooks seem like ‘Netflix for libraries,’ but they’re a drain on
> budgets*
> > by Bob Fernandez, January 17, 2019
> >
> > The book-crammed Free Library of Philadelphia has found a way to stay
> > relevant in the 21st century: ebooks. Last year, 28 percent of the Free
> > Library’s total circulation of more than 5 million books came from ebooks
> > and other digital content.
> >
> > As popularity soars, publishers and content providers have adopted
> “metered
> > access” and per-checkout models for ebooks and other content. That’s
> > *guzzling
> > library cash and resulting in book-lending inefficiencies*, library officials
> > warn. A so-called perpetual ebook license for libraries could be four or
> > five times the cost of either the printed book or the digital copies sold
> to
> > consumers.
> >
> > And these are only some of the latest clashes over digital licensing as
> > publishers seek to squeeze more profits out of their content as the world
> > moves away from ink and paper.
> > “Digital content is a huge challenge for libraries," said Michael
> > Blackwell, the director of the St. Mary’s county library in Maryland and
> > project director for readersfirst, a loose federation of “nearly 300
> > libraries" (including the Free Library) dedicated to ensuring that
> readers
> > have access to "free and easy-to-use ebook content.”
> >
> > “We are trying to be reasonable but we think the large publishers are not
> > pricing ebooks fairly,” Blackwell said. "I don’t think [publishers] want
> to
> > look bad to the public but they also don’t want to explain a lot to us."
> >
> > With metered access, publishers tie the digital license for an ebook to a
> > time period such as a year or two, or a specific number of checkouts. Once
> > either of those numbers is met, the library must purchase the ebook title
> > again or it vanishes from the digital stacks like ephemera.
> >
> > *‘Perpetual License’*
> >
> > Publishers also sell ebooks on licensing deals that aren’t metered but
> > priced significantly higher than print editions. This is called a
> perpetual
> > license. Librarians refer to them as “pretend it’s print.”
> >
> > *Verses for the Dead* by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, a current top
> > New York Times bestseller, was selling on wednesday on amazon for $16.80
> > for the hardcover book. But the Free Library said the perpetual license
> was
> > $84. Amazon listed the hardback for *Circe*, also a New York Times
> > bestseller, for $16.20; the perpetual ebook license, $81.
> >
> > [NB *Circe* is by Madeleine Miller, Brown University  BA and MA in
> > Classics. News report: "She lives in Narbeth, PA with her husband and two
> > children. The Song of Achilles was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction
> and
> > has been translated into twenty-five languages."]
> >
> > Two big publishers, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, did not
> > respond to emails on the topic. A spokeswoman for the Association of
> > American Publishers declined to comment. The association’s most recent
> data
> > shows that ebooks revenues declined 2.8 percent in 2018, which did not
> > include December sales. Over the same period last year, hardback sales
> rose
> > 6.5 percent to $2.9 billion. Paperback and mass market sales rose 2
> percent
> > to $2.5 billion.
> >
> > Librarians say they understand that publishers would like to maximize the
> > revenue from hot titles. But library patrons also would like to read
> books,
> > magazines and other content on digital formats. Librarians believe that
> > book lending can boost author exposure, thus helping publishers in the
> long
> > run.
> >
> > “Some publishers believe that engaging with libraries loses money for
> > them,” said Alan Inouye, senior director of public policy and government
> > relations at the American Library Association, said …. But *“libraries
> do a
> > lot of marketing for authors,”* he added. [DPT: you bet!]
> >
> > And with libraries concerned that relations with publishers are heading
> in
> > the wrong direction, publishers, library organizations and  other
> > stakeholders launched the Panorama Project last May to gather data from
> > library services such as Overdrive to determine whether libraries hurt or
> > help publishers.
> >
> > At the Free Library in 2018, the five most popular ebooks were *The Woman
> > in the Window*(1,482 ebook circulation), *Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump
> > White House* (1,448 circulation), *The Midnight Line: Jack Reacher
> Series*
> > (1,415), *The Handmaid’s Tale* (1,406) and *Come Sundown* (1,311).
> >
> > *Metering access*
> >
> > Jennifer Maguire-Wright, the chief of the materials management division
> at
> > the Free Library, tracks checkouts and holds to help her determine the
> > number of copies of a book to purchase. She said that the metered access
> > ebook copies of *The Woman in the Window* cost $26.99 with 26 checkouts,
> or
> > $1.04 per checkout. After 26 checkouts, the ebook license expires and the
> > library had to purchase another one.
> >
> > A printed copy of *The Woman in the Window*, meanwhile, cost $16.40 on
> > amazon on wednesday. The Free Library negotiates a slight discount to the
> > market price but declined to disclose the discount. An average
> circulation
> > for a printed book is about 100 check outs, though of course that can
> vary
> > with time and usage. At the maximum number of about 100 checkouts, the
> book
> > circulates for about 16 cents per checkout.
> >
> > Maguire-Wright and other library officials acknowledge that publishers had
> > consumer data for pricing that libraries did not. But they also believe
> > that the availability of ebooks for library patrons improved over the
> > years.
> >
> > “We still need to budget for things that don’t circulate and we just have
> > here for reference material,” Maguire-Wright said, noting that she did
> not
> > see a day when ebook and digital costs would be a higher percentage of
> the
> > Free Library’s budget than its share of total circulation (28 percent).
> > Free Library, which has 54 branches across the region and more than
> 640,000
> > cardholders, had a 2017 materials budget of $4.5 million. Laverne Mann,
> the
> > Director of the Cherry Hill Public Library, said there are many benefits
> to
> > ebooks and digital content. Any ebook can be transformed into a
> large-print
> > book on a screen, a big plus for older readers. Content can be downloaded
> > 24/7. And community reading lists can be made easily available to
> everyone
> > without visiting the library. Thousands of additional titles — magazines,
> > books and even foreign language books — are available through digital
> > platforms, she said.
> >
> > Recently the Library reached a deal to make 20,000 digital copies of the
> > New York Times available to Cherry Hill public library patrons for 72
> hours
> > through a special access code, another example of a publisher
> experimenting
> > with a new economic model — after 72 hours, readers would need a new
> code.
> >
> > In 2018, the … library spent $46,000 on digital content out of a total
> > materials budget of $175,000, … Mann said. Digital usage rose 5.7 percent
> > in 2018 over 2017 and accounted for about 14 percent of all circulation
> > last year, she added. She expects total digital usage to climb about two
> > percentage points a year.
> >
> > Cherry hill also makes the hoopla service available for ebooks, audio
> > books, tv shows, movies, comics and music at a per-checkout charge that
> can
> > range between 70 cents and about $4. Tierney Miller, the reference and
> > adult services supervisor at the … library, described hoopla as “Netflix
> for
> > libraries” because there are unlimited copies simultaneously available to
> > borrowers.
> >
> > So that it doesn’t bust the library’s budget, cherry hill restricts
> members
> > to five checkouts a month, with a maximum charge of $3.99. "It’s a cash
> > guzzler, but we love it,” Miller said. Hoopla is so popular, in fact,
> that
> > the library caps its daily usage at $100. After hitting the cap, the
> > service shuts off for the day.
> >
>


-- 
Paul A. Iversen
Chair, Associate Professor
Department of Classics
Case Western Reserve University