by Public Libraries on January 26, 2012
Contra Costa County Library launched the first automated book dispensing machines in the country in 2008. Their Library-a-Go-Go dispensers are located at Bay Area Rapid Transit stops in the San Francisco area. The machines hold up to 400 books which can be browsed from a touch screen. They operate like an ATM with a swipe of a library card to dispense books. Users can have up to three books checked out at a time and return the books to the Library-a-Go-Go machines.
Washington County Library and Carver County Library in Minnesota decided to launch “Library Express” locations starting in July 2010. The locations consist of electronic lockers where library patrons can pick up books or materials that they order online or through a kiosk. Librarians deliver books twice a week to the lockers and patrons return the books to a book drop. There are three Library Express locations so far that are located in communities that are too small to support a full-fledged traditional library. The electronic locker library system is provided by LEID Products.
Library Express is very popular with Washington County Library doubling the number of lockers at their Hugo City Hall location last year. Carver County Library is equally happy with their Library Express locations. The Director of Carver County Library, Melissa Brechon said, “Judging by the demand, repeat users and positive patron feedback, the goal of the program to increase library visibility and access has been exceeded.”.
So far, the automated library vending machines have been successful in expanding a library’s presence into areas where they could not traditionally reach. The kiosks and lockers are available 24/7 every day of the week and are located in communities that are too small to be served by a traditional library. But what happens if these automated libraries are used to replace existing libraries instead of extend their reach?
Last year we saw Borders fall to Amazon and Barnes & Noble might experience the same fate. Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010 after being crushed by Netflix and Redbox.
These automated library kiosks are essentially Redbox machines for library books and materials. Ebooks pose almost as much of a threat to libraries as streaming movies from Netflix did to Blockbuster DVD rentals. The book publishers aren’t loaning out their ebook titles at libraries and Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is starting to look like the Netflix of ebooks. Library kiosks and ebooks might just be the equivalent of Redbox and Netflix for libraries.
The good news is that so far there are very few automated library kiosks and so far they are only benefitting libraries. The bad news is that libraries are fighting for their lives with politicians cutting budgets across the country. Libraries have to deal with smaller budgets while the economic environment is increasing the demand for library services.
One way to provide library services while cutting costs is to switch to an automated library kiosk. You obviously can’t compare the wide range of valuable services offered by a traditional library and trained librarians with a simple kiosk. But you have to consider that automated library machines could easily maintain or even increase circulation numbers with drastically lower real estate and personnel costs.
The concept of replacing several branch library locations with automated library terminals is a definite possibility. I don’t think that entire library systems would ever be replaced by kiosks, but I do see the possibility for certain branch locations to become automated library machines. It would be a sad day if that possibility becomes a reality.
by Public Libraries on January 25, 2012
We’re happy to announce that you can now find public records on our Public Libraries site.
Visitors to our site are often wondering where they can find public records. Our newly added section offers users easy access to sources of public records. Users will be able to find things like birth records, death records, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, parcel viewers, probate records, and court records quickly and easily.
Local libraries provide many public records resources so we thought it made sense for us to add a public records section.
by Public Libraries on January 24, 2012
Public libraries currently treat ebooks just like they do physical books. They purchase the number of copies of the ebooks they want from the OverDrive platform for a fixed price per copy. Libraries then loan those ebooks out to patrons as many times as they want to, except for certain titles which disintegrate after 26 check outs. Libraries also have to pay an annual platform fee to OverDrive to be able to use their system.
The current system is far from perfect and makes very little sense to customers that are used to downloading anything digital almost instantly. The concept of a limited number of copies of a digital file makes no sense at all. Several major publishers aren’t loaning out ebooks through OverDrive. Even with the flaws, libraries almost all use OverDrive and ebook checkouts are absolutely skyrocketing.
One company is hoping to change the entire model for borrowing ebooks through libraries. Library Ideas, LLC announced yesterday that their pay per use service is live at more than 50 libraries.
The service is called Freading and was launched in June of last year. Freading has no upfront costs for libraries and provides access to tens of thousands of ebook titles from over 40 publishers and many independent authors. The service charges libraries a fee every single time an ebook is checked out. There is no limitation on the number of times a given title can be checked out.
The advantages of the system over OverDrive are substantial. There is no such thing as a number of copies that are available so library patrons will never have to wait to check out an ebook. The entire collection of ebooks is available to every library that offers Freading. With OverDrive, libraries have to buy a copy of every title they want. This limits most libraries to only being able to offer a tiny fraction of OverDrive’s 700,000 digital titles. As an example, the New York Public Library only has 23,759 ebook titles available.
The gigantic disadvantage is that public libraries will have difficulty controlling their costs if they have to pay a fee every single time one of their patrons check out an ebook. Another drawback is that there are currently only a small number of publishers loaning their ebooks out through the service. Another major issue is that the service does not currently work from a Kindle.
Freading uses a virtual currency as a way to help libraries control costs. The service uses tokens as the currency to check out ebooks. Each ebook costs between one and four tokens to check out. A library can set how many tokens each cardholder gets each week or month. This allows a library to control the number of ebook downloads per cardholder which in turn lets the library know the maximum that they might have to pay in fees over a given period of time.
The advantages of the pay per use model over the “pretend it’s print” OverDrive model are huge. The concept of the virtual currency as a way to control total cost could be the game changer that libraries need to adopt the model. Unfortunately, any library ebook lending system has to have most of the publishers on board and has to work on Kindles to stand a chance of surviving. Hopefully, libraries will solve both of those deficiencies soon and finally be able to offer the ebook borrowing experience that their patrons are clamoring for.
by Public Libraries on January 23, 2012
We’ve found out over the years that one way to make a bunch of people angry is to take away their library. Another way to make them almost equally upset is to change their library and make it focus on ebooks.
That’s what Frank Novak, Executive Director of Rockford Public Library, proposed in two reports that were leaked to the public. The leaked reports can be viewed here and here. The documents describe a drastic change in focus to digital media for the library system. Print books would only be purchased if a digital version was not available. The change would require significant reallocation of library real estate and resources. Some examples are cutting salaries and benefits to 26% of budget from 57% while increasing materials spending from 14% to 39%. The idea being to reduce availability to print materials while dramatically increasing digital offerings. A community group, Save Our Rockford Library, released the reports to the public and is trying to gather outspoken opposition.
Protesters showed up in force at Rockford Public Library’s board meeting tonight in Illinois. They were organized by Save Our Rockford Library in an attempt to show strong opposition to the library’s plan to prioritize digital media. Thirty minutes were allocated for public comment. Many speakers received loud applause after voicing their opposition to the leaked plans.
It’s ironic that the community in Rockford is protesting too much focus on ebooks while most public libraries are scrambling to meet the demand of their patrons for more ebooks. Sales of ebooks passed all physical book sales on Amazon last year and ebook checkouts more than doubled at public libraries. It looks like it’s possible for libraries to make the decision to adopt ebooks too quickly.
The message in Rockford, IL is clear. You are destroying a library if you plan on transitioning it to focus on ebooks.
