A Look at eBook Usage, Availability at Two Atlanta-Area Libraries
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
The impact [new e-reader purchased during the 2011 holiday season] on area libraries was similarly dramatic. Cobb’s number of “unique library card users” checking out e-books jumped by 31 percent from November to December. Public demand was so great that the cash-strapped DeKalb County Public Library carved $10,000 out of its budget to begin lending e-books in December.
“No other [new] format has compared to e-books in terms of popularity and exponential growth,” said John Szabo, director of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, where e-book checkout numbers first surged noticeably during the 2010 holiday season and haven’t let up since.
“It’s a huge opportunity,” Szabo continued. “I worry about us not being able to take enough advantage of it.”
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For all the excitement surrounding e-books, they’re still a small part of what libraries do. Atlanta-Fulton Library users checked out 3,863,558 items in 2011, of which 45,083 were e-books or e-audiobooks. Cobb’s 345,112 library card holders currently include 8,634 users of the digital download service.
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DeKalb’s acquisitions budget, which has to cover everything from large print and children’s book purchases to DVDs and magazine subscriptions, didn’t grow to accommodate the addition of e-books.
“We wiggled the money out of something else,” said Weissinger. “We’re buying fewer extra copies of things now and having to spread them across more formats than ever.”
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We believe that pricing to libraries must account for the higher value of this institutional model, which permits e-books to be repeatedly circulated without limitation,” Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesperson, explained in an emailed statement.
Read the Complete Article
See Also: Visit the DeKalb County Public Library Web Site
See Also: Visit the Cobb County Public Library Web Site
Filed under: Libraries, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries

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.