Quote:
Originally Posted by tponzo
This is completely outrageous. I am a book buyer today because my mother took me to the library when I was younger. Not only do I find new authors whose books I then might decide to buy but I also read lots of other things which I might not want to actually own. I suppose some kind of lending limit makes sense to publishers but it makes no sense to me. You can't really compare to p-books which eventually are damaged beyond use; e-books don't get damaged by use. If you must however have lending limits 26 seems crazy. In Cleveland, where I live my library has a fairly large selection of e-books but it also a large number of borrowers so having to replace licenses after only 26 books would price them out of the market. Is this what H/C wants? Someone said that they don't think e-books should be part of library inventory because ebook readers are the province of people with the discretionary income to afford them. Maybe that is H/C's true goal. Maybe they really do want to make ebooks only accessible to "certain" people. 
And geographic restrictions -  I thought the thing that made the internet so wonderful was less restrictions on people not more. What difference does it possibly make where I live if I want to borrow a book electronically as long as I have internet access. It's not like a p-book where if I take it out of the jurisdiction they can't get it back. With Overdrive the book is only "active" for the borrowing period and then I can't access it anymore.
During bad economic times more people use libraries then ever. Why in the world does H/C think that restricting access is going to make economic sense. If people are using the library because they can't afford p-books and e-books cost the same as p-books (or almost), which people can't afford, and you restrict access by libraries .... (can you say circular logic?) ... seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me.
I can feel Andrew Carnegie turning over in his grave  |
The logic that only certain people can afford ereaders is only true for now - it's not hard to imagine a future where everyone has one, where they hand them out in schools, where they're as cheap as electronic calculators (which once cost more than ereaders do now).
So we can't allow this to stand - it's the thin edge of the wedge. We can't let the publishers call the shots for *our* libraries.