Alachua County library discontinues ecard

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

If the users are paying for the card, what's the problem? If its an issue of the service not being valued properly (i.e. membership is too cheap), that can be taken care of.

At some level, of course, it is an issue of valuation. But it's more complicated than just paying for the card because libraries are paid for by taxes, not by user fees.

Almost $200 of my annual property taxes go to support my local library. This is a pretty good deal for me, I think. However, even if I never used the library, I would be paying that much to the library in taxes. And a lot of people who never use the library still have to pay as much as I do to the library, or even more.

(On the other hand, I pay a lot more for schools, and, having no children and being well above school age myself, I don't get any direct use from the schools. But that's how taxes work - the money goes into a large pool and is spent according to a budget set by elected representatives. I, as a non-school user, subsidize school users; on the other hand, non-library users subsidize me, potentially. (And of course we all pay for people who don't pay property taxes, or who don't pay very much).

A person who pays for an out-of-state library card is in a different category. There is no legal obligation for them to pay anything to a library in a different state. So if they do so, they are, I assume, doing this because they will gain some economic advantage by doing so. Specifically, if someone pays $50 to the Philly library, they are doing so because they believe that the benefit they will receive from the Philly library is at least $50 - it would be stupid (and weird) for them to act otherwise. However, unlike taxpayers, they don't make up for this subsidy by somehow subsidizing someone else in exchange - they don't pay for schools or poor relief or anything else that taxes are used for in the community.
So they end up being something of a net drain on the community (if not on the library).

I can't choose just to pay taxes for those things that I use, like the library, while not paying taxes for schools or poor relief. So I don't think it is in the interest of most communities to allow someone to cherry pick their library's e-books.

The libraries themselves might be in favor of this, as providing some extra revenue. But I would resist it as a taxpayer, since the result of the outside revenue is worse service for me - and of course I have to pay my library taxes regardless.

[Fbone]

Sometimes I read that the annual fees library's charge are an equivalent to what the average resident may pay in library taxes.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by simplyparticular

Hmmm, I have their e-card and didn't get an email. I signed up when someone posted the details back in the spring.

I think I've checked out 5 books in that time (compared to the 60+ I've checked out from my 2 local/regional libraries). One of the things I liked about Alachua was that they made the effort to purchase ALL of a series. My libraries seem to cherry pick :P

And I can definitely understand local residents being upset if hold times got long. I did just check out a backlist title by a popular author who has a new book out, and didn't see a huge wait on any of her books at Alachua, compared to a huge wait at eNYPL and Buffalo, so I'm not sure they're getting a heavy traffic volume, anyway.

I'm running into that with the St Louis County Library.

Since I moved, and now qualify for SLCL access, I've made extensive use of it. Today I wanted to check out some Christopher Moore books, and they did not have the first book in the Bloodsucking Fiends series, despite having books 2, 3, and the sorta connected "A Dirty Job". You'd figure, they'd at least have the first book.

As a whole, despite its size, the SLCL doesn't seem to have a long hold list. Longest I've seen for any book was 13 people (for Dance with Dragons at release). Second longest was 5.

[BaenSidhe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

A person who pays for an out-of-state library card is in a different category. There is no legal obligation for them to pay anything to a library in a different state. So if they do so, they are, I assume, doing this because they will gain some economic advantage by doing so. Specifically, if someone pays $50 to the Philly library, they are doing so because they believe that the benefit they will receive from the Philly library is at least $50 - it would be stupid (and weird) for them to act otherwise. However, unlike taxpayers, they don't make up for this subsidy by somehow subsidizing someone else in exchange - they don't pay for schools or poor relief or anything else that taxes are used for in the community.
So they end up being something of a net drain on the community (if not on the library).

I don't understand your point here. If the library fee is priced correctly, the out of state person is paying for all of his usage. So that out of state person is not using up the subsidy paid by the community. If that user doesn't utilize that card for whatever reason, then that money will help subsidize the community. (And it'll go either way if the library fee isn't priced correctly.)

Why does it matter whether or not the out of state person's library card fee goes to anything besides the library?

[Hellmark]

I know before I moved, I looked into getting library access through various libraries, since I lived in an unserved area. The only library near by was a small dinky one, that was only for the people who lived in the town I lived near (and since I was just outside of the border, I couldn't use it). The neighboring counties offered library access to nonresidents, and from the people I talked to, their fee was based on roughly what would have been paid through taxes were I a resident, usually rounded up to a nice number. Based on the info I was given, the SLCL gets roughly $31 dollars per person on average, where as they charge $50 for nonresident membership.

Based on that info, how can the non residents be seen as being a leech? They'll most likely use the library less due to lack of physical access, limiting them to pretty much just the ebooks, and when ever they are in town. Yeah, they're not paying for schools, and things like that, but then again, they're also not using those other things. They're strictly using the library, which they help fund it better than the actual residents do.