Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
And, of course, of libraries were to band together to take collective action....wouldn’t that be the same as The Big5 coordinating with Apple against Amazon?
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Interesting question.
To re-word, is it legal for local governments to band together in a buyer cartel?
I'm not a lawyer, but -- I think it would be in my country (U.S.).
However, if I was on the board of the library, I wouldn't be interested. Instead I would want to know the long-term total costs of each eBook borrow vs. each pBook borrow. I'd also want to know some other numbers, like how much it comparatively costs to have eBooks and pBooks, in the collection, that got great reviews and/or won awards, but don't circulate much. I'd also want to know some large print comparisons. Then based on that, if there was really a dramatic cost advantage for pBooks, I'd vote to push the overall collections that way pretty dramatically.
As I've said before, my back-of-the-envelope cost comparison -- refusing to treat our existing physical branches as permanent sunk costs -- is that eBooks are cheaper. I don't think the recent changes would reverse this. If so, I'd push in that direction, but slowly in light of community center sorts of functions for our branches. Eventually it might mean putting some branches in smaller rented spaces focusing on services to children.
What I wouldn't have much patience for is treating supplier pricing as a moral issue.