More on Douglas County's model
Douglas County's model has been the subject of some twitter discussion lately, thanks to Brian Kenney's essay in Publisher's Weekly, Giving Them What They Should Want. It's worth a read, even if you're crunched for time. Kenney raises some excellent points about the limitations of the Douglas County model:
Today, DCL spends over $700,000 a year on e-books, a considerable portion of which goes to publishers other than the big six. Under associate director Rochelle Logan, the library is acquiring e-books from over 800 publishers, including some midsized but mostly small and regional presses. And, to me, therein lies a problem. To support its idealistic e-book strategy, is DCL reduced to acquiring books that, frankly, will interest few readersâdigital versions of what librarians kindly call shelf-sitters?
This is not meant to disparage small presses or the value of their publications. But it is unusual for a public library to fill its catalogue with material that the public hasnât requested and that will likely provide limited return on investment. For the more popular titles that are available, DCL is still a customer of Overdrive and 3M. But LaRue says he wonât buy an e-book that costs more than $50, although he admits he gets plenty of pressure from staff to do so.
Every library has to balance their principles with patron demand. My consortium is an OverDrive customer. Our OverDrive libraries have decided that HarperCollins books are too limited for our shared collection. We don't buy them. They are voting on Macmillan this week, but I'm assuming that since the principle is the same, we won't buy those either. Personally, I feel pulled between two trains of thought. On the one hand, the limited circulation model doesn't work well for shared collections, and I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term for libraries. On the other, I hate the idea of turning down patron requests for books we could technically buy. When I handled print collections, I had no problem turning down a request for a very expensive academic title for a resident of a neighboring town. But this feels different; less responsible stewardship of tax dollars and more a stand for the long term interests of the library. We're also talking about wide swaths of ebooks, not just the occasional oddball request.Â
Still, I love the idea of the curated local collection. The algorithmic partnership with SmashWords that Kenney addresses has less appeal. As the big publishers merge, small publishers might find niches to flourish in (I keep picturing the rise of the mammals) and early partnerships with libraries will be beneficial to our collections. But Kenney has a point:
That strategy seems to represent a new chapter in a debate public librarians in America have had for 150 years: should we be providing our readers with the material they want, or should we be providing books we think they should read? Because, however noble DCLâs motivation is for its model, when it comes to e-books, the system is pushing its patrons to read something other than what they want to read. Itâs back to the 19th century, Kindle in hand.
I keep thinking about Ann Arbor and their programming-driven, localization approach. Libraries take chances with programming all the time, worrying less about what people want and more about what will draw them to the door (those two things sound the same, but they aren't, think of Henry Ford's faster horse). Erin Shea wondered recently how to capture and quantify engagement, noting "Iâd rather host a 7-person program that caused those patrons to think differently than host a 150-person seminar with a quack doctor who I let present because he wouldnât stop calling me."
Traditionally, libraries have been cautious about local self-published authors (often the book equivalent of the quack doctor who won't stop calling), but that's changing. Part of the appeal of the algorithm-driven Smashwords collection is that librarians don't have to look a patron in the eye and tell them that their book isn't good enough to buy. As Jamie LaRue points out, there are gems to be found in the online publishing world. If we want patrons to come and make stuff with our 3D printers, why wouldn't we want them to put their books on our servers?
I agree with Kenney that we can't just buy stuff we think our patrons ought to read. But we can't buy many of the things they do want to read as ebooks, perhaps a carefully curated collection of small presses and local authors is worth offering. Rather than considering it an extension of our patron demand-driven collection, we might do well to think of it as part of  outreach and programming initiatives, an emphasis on the community and its creativity.Â
I fear I may be backing into a justification, looking to reframe a library-owned ebook collection rather than taking a hard look at its utility and popularity. Ultimately, I think the Douglas County model is worth trying. I hope lots of different libraries and library organizations try it. I'm even pushing to try it in Connecticut. It may not get us where we need to go in our relationship with publishers, but this is the time to experiment with different models and any that allow some autonomy (more important than ownership these days) are worth trying. In the next few years, we will likely see increased domination by Amazon (especially if Barnes and Noble gives up on the Nook), which has not been a good trend for libraries. It does feel a bit regressive to push content our patrons haven't asked for, but in this case, libraries aren't the ones putting books in chains.Â
Side note: I asked the folks in Colorado for some info on how they set up their ebook loaning system. They pointed me to this site:Â http://evoke.cvlsites.org which details the various Douglas County-style set ups.Â
