Quote:
Originally Posted by screwballl
what the ****? Wait times for an ebook? You walk up, you download it to your reader and you go. Where the heck does a wait time come into play? It is digital media, easily reproducible and distributed.
Someone really has a racket going on. Considering most of the books should be available online for cheap or free, sounds like someone did not really think that out too well.
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Libraries
buy books. When they paper books, they buy X number of paper copies, where X is determined by the number of branches that will stock the books, and the number of copies they think they will need to meet patron demand. When they buy ebooks, they also buy a set number of copies, based on anticipated demand.
Ebooks are tracked much the same way physical books are. If all purchased copies of an ebook are out on loan, the book is unavailable until one of more have been returned.
The fact that ebooks can be easily reproduced doesn't mean they can be legally distributed. You might not care about the applicable laws, but libraries have to.
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Dennis