Kindle book lending site!

I find this fascinating - someone has set up a website to borrow and lend Kindle books.  The site is called Lendle and you can read about how it works here.  The site's FAQ makes it pretty clear that what they are doing is taking advantage of the fact that Amazon allows you to share books with friends.  That sharing is pretty restrictive, but if you were to scale it up, as Lendle is trying to do, you could create a borrowing library of some substance.  In the end, however, the problem remains with this statement from the FAQ:

How many times can I lend my book?

Unfortunately, Amazon only allows each owner of a book to lend it once.

The scale will have to be quite large, in terms of copies of each title, in order to make the service work for very long.  I think the time is coming to hash out what will become of the "printed" word.  The idea the Lendle represents is what most of us recognize as at least an interlibrary loan (ILL) system, something libraries everywhere already do with paper material.

The issue seems to be whether or not people will pirate all the ebooks if the publishers relax their rules just a tad.  Will that happen?  Maybe.  Certainly, to some degree there will always be copyright violations - there always have been.  But libraries buy a lot of books.  Libraries will continue to buy a lot of books in paper format for the foreseeable future.  We want to continue to make the published word available to everyone, including those people who won't buy an ereader or will not be able to afford to buy one and the books to read on it.

There's always print-on-demand too.  How cool would that be?  Patron checks catalog...oops!  The Library doesn't own that one.  "No problem!" says the librarian, "Have a cup of coffee and I'll bring you your copy in a few minutes!"

Libraries on life-support

I know that librarians do a poor job of explaining their worth to just about everyone.  I know that I am equally culpable in not making a better effort to advocate, extol, and generally proselytize the virtues of what is often viewed as a prim-and-proper relic of the past - the public library.  I promise to do better.  I am going to increase my campaigning, awareness-raising, interest-garnering activities this year, and I am starting here.

I also know that I have been ranting with increasing frequency these days at the lack of thought and foresight employed by our nation's leadership.  So part of my righteous indignation (intelligible or not) will be directed at some of the dangerously short-sighted foolishness our leaders are proposing as "prudent".

Three different articles and/or calls to action came to my attention just this morning.  The first is a great opinion piece by the author Scott Turow published on that bastion of "lefty"-ness, the Huffington Post.  Don't, however, discount the power of the article simply because of the medium.  Read it - Mr. Turow hits the nail on the head regarding the attitudes of today that are quite literally destroying the egalitarian basis of our nation.

The next article is a blog post presenting 10 "misperceptions" about public libraries.  The post is a somewhat humorous look at ways we librarians are perceived.  I think most of them are fairly commonly held and I think the list could be expanded quite easily.

The third thing that I read this morning was a call to action on a piece of federal legislation - the FY2011 Continuing Resolution.  It would seem that a Representative, Mr. Scott Garrett - R-NJ, would like to eliminate all funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) including Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).  Not only would this be disastrous for libraries, it is monumentally, colossally stupid.  Money from LSTA funds lots of library related things.  In Kansas, some federal funds provide access to databases.  Databases offered at public libraries like "Learning Express" provide practice tests for all sorts of degrees and certifications.  People who have lost their jobs often come to public libraries to get help finding new jobs.  Yet we want to cut the funding for these tools?

So, do people really still use libraries?  The answer is "yes".  My post about Kansas' State Librarian testifying before the legislature shows that.  The really sad thing is that in the grand scheme of things, libraries are cheap.  The root of all this funding nonsense gets back to the idea that librarians are terrible at letting everyone else know how many people they serve for how little.  Two rants in one week - I'd better go check my blood pressure.

State Librarian Testifies

Earlier this week, the State Librarian of Kansas testified before the Kansas House of Representatives' Education Budget Committee regarding funding for Kansas libraries.  Here is a .pdf of her remarks.  A good illustration of something reaching a "tipping point" is the withered budget for the "State Aid grant program".

First a little background:  The "State Aid" grant program is money distributed directly to libraries in Kansas and is intended to supplement local budgets and help raise the level of library service across the state.  We in Hutchinson have been fortunate over the years and haven't been in desperate need for these funds, but they do help and we use them for their intended purpose - to raise the level of service we provide.

To return to the tipping point idea; the budget for State Aid has dropped from $2.7 million in 2002 to $1.7 million in 2011.  The money is distributed based on population served, so it was never much for smaller communities anyway, but that small amount has shrunk by about 36% in less than a decade.  The Legislature and the Governor have arrived at the moment where they need to decide if libraries are worth anything to Kansas.

Here's what a snapshot of library service means to Kansans on a daily basis.  In one day:

• 39,037 people visited their local library (roughly 10.1 MILLION visits per year!)
• 75,827 items were checked out (roughly 19.6 MILLION loans per year!)
• 4,411 questions were answered
• 10, 859 people used the Internet (roughly 40% of those have no other Internet access)
• 1,945 people found help searching for a job (that is over 500,000 job searches per year!)

I suppose my point is, how else could you provide that amount of service for such a paltry sum?  Granted, all of those libraries services are primarily supported by local tax dollars.  Many small libraries rely on State Aid grants to provide that "extra" that helps some of those 500,000 job searches turn into job offers for the patrons they serve.  The prime example of this is the statewide database subscriptions.  Only the largest and strongest of our State's libraries could afford these on their own.  Learning Express Library is one that many job seekers and students would sorely miss if the State Library couldn't fund it.  It provides scores of practice tests for academic and occupational certifications.

If the State Library "tips"; if our State leaders cut more; they might as well cut the whole thing.  There is a point at which a service becomes non-functional and the State Aid program is nearly there.  When funds or manpower or delivery methods become so curtailed as to be a waste of the remaining money spent on it, a decision must be made.  I would argue that in the tight budget they are looking at, the State should dump a few million EXTRA into the State Aid grant program and the state-wide database system.  Many people are, quite clearly, using their libraries for help during our economic recovery.  How better to lend a hand to people who are seeking out solutions to their problems?  These are the motivated ones - give them a leg up instead of tripping them up.  Libraries, especially public libraries can and will help them succeed.

So that's my rant-for-the-week.  Thanks for indulging me.