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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Who said anything about getting books for other people?
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I was just posting a silly answer to what I thought was a silly statement. Not being serious. The way I read your statement, it came across as something akin to "Don't get in line to buy your groceries, because that just makes other people in line behind you have to wait longer." Kind of an obvious and silly thing to say. Maybe I mis-read your intent with your statement, but at first I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke.
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If you use the holds so you can uninterrupted and all the time read only popular books, then it is kind of abusing the system.
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I don't see it that way at all. If they give you a tool, why is it abusive if you use that tool for the purpose it was designed for? It was designed to let you put holds on things. So why not do that?
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It is a matter of fairness, but ultimately only a matter of fairness as long as your own selfish needs are fulfilled.
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I don't begrudge anybody for being in front of me in the hold line. They got there first, so of course they should be in front of me. It's not like they're ticket scalpers - rushing to be first in line to get something that they have no intention of using, only to immediately sell it at a profit. Library book loans are not like that.
I'm not sure I see the point for limiting loans on library books. Sure, physical books you have to actually have the physical book to loan it out. But digital books? If ten people want to borrow it, loan it to all ten of them. If twenty want to borrow it, loan it to all twenty. Obviously, limiting the number of library loans is a solution to a problem, I just don't understand what the problem was. It must be to assure profits for somebody. Fine. When the library obtains an ebook for loaning, I'm pretty sure they have to pay for it. Give that payment to the publisher (that's probably what they already do). Then every loan of the ebook results in a 5 cent charge to the borrower. Half goes to the library and the other half to the author. That's probably a heck of a lot more payment to the author than the publishers ever give in the current system. With ebooks, there is no ongoing cost to the publisher. So I say, give them one payment per ebook copy up front, and then they're out of the picture. Any money after that goes to the author and the facility maintaining the loaning infrastructure (the library).