Salt Lake City Library Pays More for e-Books Than for Print
From The Deseret News:
E-books are purchased through OverDrive Inc., an e-content provider to more than 11,000 libraries. The Salt Lake Library pays $12,000 a year for the OverDrive online checkout service, then pays a fee per title to rent out books to patrons.
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The library has to buy multiple copies because each is checked out online one-by-one. For example, if the library wants to purchase five titles of John Grisham’s “The Litigators,” then it would have to pay $184.95 at $36.99 per book.
Print copies of the same book cost $28.95.
Experts in e-content acquisition say if this model doesn’t change, libraries will be in trouble.
Michael Porter, a former librarian, said that the high prices for e-content are interfering with the mission of library systems. He now works with Library Renewal, a nonprofit group working to create an infrastructure for e-content acquisition that bridges the gap between publishers and libraries.
Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Publishing
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
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