Quote:
Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man
This is what annoys me about digital books and libraries. It's a digital file. It's literally always available! There should never be a reason to have to place a hold on it. I can understand only having access to it for a limited time, but anybody who wants to borrow it should be able to borrow it at any time without restriction. It's one of the reasons my wife gave up trying to borrow books on her ereader because it was such a hassle for something that should have been the very definition of convenience. Now she never touches her Kobo and just borrows books the old fashioned way. Why wait weeks for a digital download to become "available' when a physical copy is just a drive across town away?
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Last time I looked, the library gets to pay extra for each concurrent loan. Much the same as physical books, CDs, etc. -- you pay extra for the extra copies. Perhaps your local libraries have unlimited budgets? Around here, the budgets are limited (and limiting).
As for the physical copy being available? Unless you are planning on purchasing the book, my experience has been that popular books are popular books in paper or electronic form and you will be waiting for either. When I look at a couple of books that are arriving at the local library in early September, one has 23 holds on 4 paper copies and 18 holds on 4 electronic copies while the other has 34 holds on 5 paper copies and 31 holds on 5 electronic copies.