May
30
Libraries Grapple With The Downside Of E-Books
From Queens Library’s CEO Tom Gallante: “When you license content through [OverDrive] you really aren’t owning the content. Every year you have to pay [OverDrive] to continue to have that subscription service or you lose your content that you already paid for.” More importantly, Queens needs to check in over 70,000 books a day (and check out the same number); when the information is digital, there are fewer additional costs to circulating materials.
DCWG Cochair Bob Wolven also is quoted: “These are questions that go beyond what we are doing now—we want to avoid developing the model for next year that’s going to be obsolete by the time anyone gets to put it in place.”
