Waitlists for Library Books Have TRIPLED Since Xmas!

[SeaBookGuy]

I believe I've read here at MR that you flag the system in returning items within 48 hours; folks report having done so after opening the book, realizing right away it wasn't what they'd anticipated, went to return the book, and found their Overdrive account temporarily frozen as a result.

[pokee]

Originally Posted by Mysterio

I am on the wait list for 3 (which is the maximum) ebooks in the Halton Hills Library system. 2 have 8 people in front of me and one has nine. Assuming there is a 3 week per person wait I am looking at a 24 week wait for my first book. That is almost half a year! This seems a little ridiculous to me.

A quick perusal of all the ebooks in their system revealed that there is a wait list for "all" their ebooks. That is like walking into a library and it is completely empty. I think they either underestimated the demand for ebooks or they spent all their money on new bricks and mortar expansions and had none left over for electronic file licences.

Yeah, and this was my point for the original post - back in November I was ALREADY waiting about 2 months for a recent release when I was only 7th on the waiting list (so, some quick math tells me they probably had 2 copies of that title), and now I am on waitlists that have 27 people on them (I am another lucky recipient of the BC Online Library - which lends to the entire province...which is 4.5 million people. It is essentially an 'empty' library - as another poster pointed out, with very little available for immediate download).

I was 5th out of 5 people when I put the new Russell Brand book on hold just over a week ago, and now there are 34 people on that list! YIKES!!! And for Russell Brand?!?!?!

Like I said before - I think they are banking on people buying bestsellers so they can read them right away (rather than wait for weeks). I don't mind waiting for some (but not all) - so we'll see how it progresses. The BC online library does not appear to have had any new material in the past few weeks...all their 'new' or 'hot' titles are exactly the same as they were in mid-December. Something tells me our Canadian friends in Toronto may have better ebook borrowing chances than we do out west...

[drawlll]

Nowadays I only read ebooks, I only ever read novels and I generally only want to read them once. I couldn't afford to buy everything I read and the libraries I download from are not the answer, that is why I have gone to the dark side.

I often think a more sensible model would be a subscription library, say for a small fee you could have one copy for say two weeks, I think it would keep everyone happy, if I buy a paper book I usually give it away after reading and it gets passed on and on. If say ten people end up reading it and they all contributed each would have to pay 10% of the purchace price, surely a subscription library would work the same.

[kiwipippa]

I jut put the books on hold then forget about them. I'm 41st out of 48 for Nicholas Sparks' Safe Haven and 22nd out of 45 for Ken Follet's Fall of Giants. I won't be getting either of these any time soon. This is the Philadelphia Free Library which has a $15 pa annual fee for non residents so it VERY overloaded. But my local library doesn't offer ebooks so beggars can't be choosers - I just put up with it.

But I like drawll's idea of a subscription service - or something like the local video store where you rent for a week.

[KoboNo]

If an eBook store cannot run out of eBooks then a library should not either. The problem here is that licences are getting in the way of the technological advance of having free library books available electronically any time.

[JPenguin]

I agree that the licenses are getting in the way of technical advancement but do you have any suggestions on how to fairly compensate the authors while giving away unlimited free copies to anyone?

If libraries worked on a similar principle to Netflix streaming, subscription music services, etc then I think things would be fine but with libraries being publicly funded and overdue book fines (which of course don't exist with ebooks) I don't see a fair method of compensating the authors.

[KoboNo]

Originally Posted by JPenguin

I agree that the licenses are getting in the way of technical advancement but do you have any suggestions on how to fairly compensate the authors while giving away unlimited free copies to anyone

Unfortunately I don't and is the very reason why there has always been a conflict between publishers, authors/artists, and the people that buy their works. Everyone wants more.

[amo]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

In the meantime, you all may be missing out on some great reads available here, in the Patricia C. Clark Memorial Library.

Public Domain, by authors who have withstood the test of time, and knew how to write.

Over 15,000 available, no waits, free downloads.

Formatted by our own members, proofed for errors and extraneous pages.

Click on my link below for help getting started.

Bumping up this post, to make sure it's being noticed! Ever since I found the MR E-books (thanks, dg!), I've been addicted to it. It's the first place I go to look if there's a particular book I want. It really *is* the cat's meow.

[HarleyB]

This post made me "forget" about the library for a while - plus I had so many books that I bought for Christmas to read.
But 2 days ago I logged into my 2 libraries here in Australia and before I knew it I had 16 books checked out - 10 for me and 6 for my husband. Normally I would only take out 5 or 6 at a time but I kept expecting things to not be available and when they were I just had to borrow them.
Now I have my work cut out for me to read them all in the next 3 weeks. Luckily I started with 2 fairly short books and so they are already done. My husband has finished his first book too so I this morning I returned 3 of them.