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Originally Posted by loviedovie
Let me clarify my position.
I am not talking about the benefits of OD or how awesome it is. I am talking about the long term effects on the way the local libraries operate.
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Thank you for clarifying that your position is exactly what I thought it was.
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Now maybe you do not give a damn flying bird poop about this issue. However I am claiming that in 20 years you wont be able to borrow paper books or ebooks that are owned by the library from your local libs. Probably you still will be able to borrow paper books, but with special permission, and not to take out of to the library. And all the ebooks and the digital contents that your local lib will provide you will come through OD. OD will decide and filter while maybe keeping an eye on the market needs.
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Well, make up your mind. Will you be able to borrow paper books or not? Granted that you've decided paper books are Not The Issue.
Personally, if we are all going to be hazarding random fact-free predictions of the future, I predict that we will be able to borrow paper books just like we do today, for far, far, far,
FAR longer than 20 years. Maybe the better part of a century, or however long it takes for people to not WANT to buy or borrow paper books.
Eventually we will reach a point where actual paper books are priceless historical artifacts, and no one will be allowed to touch the ones still in existence, but that is an entirely different matter.
Meanwhile, OverDrive will continue to impartially offer a catalog full of all BPH-published ebooks (and continue to mostly discriminate against Indie books), under the terms and prices agreed to by the publishers, and libraries will continue to be able to buy whatever ebooks they choose, without any filtering.
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Come back to this topic 20 years later and write what you think about the state of the local libraries then. I am saying that as long as most people think that this is the libraries should operate, like letting a corporation run the backend and the frontend of our libraries, we wont have free and fair libraries in the future.
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What does it matter who runs the infrastructure? You realize libraries for a long time have been paying corporations to run their backend and frontend? Whether it is their webhost or the vendor who provides the cataloging software (BiblioCommons, Polaris, etc.) it is and always has been corporations who do things for money, that provide public services the tools necessary to do their job.
To think otherwise is downright naïve, and I think you should leave activism-for-the-public-good to people who know what they are talking about.
Yes, libraries themselves are well-equipped to ask the questions you are asking, and surprisingly enough, they DO actually care about the fulfilling their fundamental purpose as a service for the public good. Why don't you discuss these questions with your local librarians and see what they think, for a start?
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Probably the number of physical libraries will diminish and those who can stand against the sands of time will mostly be culture centers.
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As opposed to... what? Paper book vending machines?
I
want the paper book vending machines to die! They have no reason whatsoever to exist!
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Again you do not need physical hospitable buildings to provide digital lending library services. For instance Gutenberg.org and Archive.org does not have cafes or buildings to hang around.
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What is your point???
Anyway the issue I am raising here has nothing to do with paper books whatsoever. I am talking about one corporation dominating our libraries. Paperbooks will be here for a while, that is not the main issue. OD providing lending library or not does not make a difference on the fate of paper books. That is just the way techology replacing another tachnology. That should not be the part of the discussion here.[/QUOTE]
No one but you thought that anyone thought it should make a difference, so I guess that is all right then?