What about national libraries?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

The obvious questions then is; What stops them from lending?

Copyright? The titles being offered are all public domain.

[Asawi]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

The obvious questions then is; What stops them from lending?

Probably rules and fees involved with licensing.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

National libraries like British Library, Library of Congress, Royal Libraries in Scandinavian countries etc have a special obligation to accumulate everything published in a certain country. Their collections are simply enormous. Don't they also have that obligation with regard to electronic publishing? Wouldn't that imply that they can lend e-books to the general public? After all, it is their taxes that pay for the collections.

Is lending books within the scope of their charters? I was always under the impression that the L.O.C., at least, was the 'Fort Knox' of American intellectual treasure. A lending library's job is to distribute such treasure, an archival library's job is to make sure it doesn't get lost. Personally, I'm comfortable with that distinction.

As all media becomes digitized, maybe the distinction becomes blurred, since you never lend the source 'document' but only a copy. But I am quite comfortable with a ban on distribution of source documents.

[GlenBarrington]

I don't think that in the USA, libraries are required to pay royalties or licensing fees, at least on paper books, I could be wrong though. Does anyone know with certainty?

I suspect it is more a charter thing.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

As all media becomes digitized, maybe the distinction becomes blurred, since you never lend the source 'document' but only a copy. But I am quite comfortable with a ban on distribution of source documents.

Yes, unless you are researching the design of a text rather than the ideas contained within the text source documents don't really need to be lent. They do need to be scanned and made freely available to all though.

[jehane]

I'm not sure about the National Library of Australia, but certainly some (physical) materials can be borrowed from the State Library of Western Australia - I have done so in the past. IIRC it was mainly materials that were not allowed to be photocopied - I borrowed some music scores about 15 years ago. I have more recently borrowed reference material, but had to do it as an ILL through my work library.