Re:The Ruling That Threatens the Future of Libraries
by Retric on Monday April 10, 2023 @05:44PM
(#35517761)
> every copy of Shakespeare
Sorry, I assumed that was your complaint about the Shakespeare book printed in the 1700’s.
There are multiple orders of magnitude less ghostwritten dreck than self-published books. In publishing the long tail is vast. A library can easily have every book that sold 50,000+ copies from the last 10 years without wasting much space. Simply as a practical measure there just aren’t that many “popular” books.
I am not saying that the tail end of books with 100 copies has no value, but you can’t keep everything for all time. If nobody has checked a book out in a year it’s only so valuable to the local community.
I find nothing wrong with ILL for Plutarch simply on a cost basis. Shipping books around isn’t free, but neither is shelf space. The point where the probability of someone wanting a book is significantly less than the cost of ILL is a real benefit.
Sorry, I assumed that was your complaint about the Shakespeare book printed in the 1700’s.
There are multiple orders of magnitude less ghostwritten dreck than self-published books. In publishing the long tail is vast. A library can easily have every book that sold 50,000+ copies from the last 10 years without wasting much space. Simply as a practical measure there just aren’t that many “popular” books.
I am not saying that the tail end of books with 100 copies has no value, but you can’t keep everything for all time. If nobody has checked a book out in a year it’s only so valuable to the local community.
I find nothing wrong with ILL for Plutarch simply on a cost basis. Shipping books around isn’t free, but neither is shelf space. The point where the probability of someone wanting a book is significantly less than the cost of ILL is a real benefit.