michael said:
> Sorry, but lots of libraries are doing JUST that!!!
> Selling the books after digitizing. . . .
> I bought several volumes of the NY Herald when this was done.
> I will probably buy more.
i'm afraid this situation is already bad, and will certainly get worse.
universities nationwide are coming into a huge money crunch and
it costs a lot of money to house books. and the benefits of doing so
are becoming ever less clear, since usage has dropped precipitously.
(ends up if the kids can't get it online, they won't trudge to a library,
they'll just do without. and not just the kids, but the _faculty_ too!)
so yes, universities are building book warehouses for collections.
(the u.c. southern regional library facility is on-campus at u.c.l.a.)
but there's even more to the story.
some google library partners like _michigan_ are forming co-ops
(e.g., the hathi trust) that will offer scansets to other institutions.
right now, obviously, they're aiming at colleges and universities,
but it's fairly clear they will soon target research institutions and
private schools, public schools in big cities, and big city libraries.
every entity that is now funding a library (which is probably quite
limited in scope and fairly expensive to maintain) will soon find
they can instead get access to a much bigger corpus of material
for a much cheaper price by subscribing to these rent-a-libraries.
so they will all get rid of their paper-books. (can't afford both!)
so the problem is not just the libraries where scans are made,
but every single library across the entire country.
now, in an ideal world, that would be great!, because we would all
agree that everyone should have unlimited access to this library,
just like they have unlimited access to their neighborhood library.
but that's not what the moneychangers have in mind, no siree...
this isn't a chance for society to save money.
to the contrary, it's a way for the moneychangers to rob society.
in addition to the fee they'll extract from each overall institution,
they'll likely want to charge a fee to each individual user as well,
perhaps even a per-page fee for every page every user views...
some of you might think that that would be totally reasonable.
you're mistaken. you're badly mistaken. you're very badly mistaken.
the reason you're mistaken is that sharing these scans is a process
that has very little variable cost. most of the costs were fixed costs.
scanning, for instance, was a fixed cost, and a one-time cost at that.
by the time these scans have been pushed out a dozen times, they
will have paid their fixed costs... everything after that, and there'll
be much usage after that, will be profit, pure profit, _excess_ profit.
the moneychangers want to get paid over and over and over again.
when you consider that these books were purchased and housed
at _public_ expense -- some of 'em for well over a century -- this
profiteering against the public's pocket is totally unconscionable.
still, librarian bureaucrats have proven time and time and time again
that they're complete idiots who will cut their own throats long-term
to get even a questionable good in the short-term. so they will play
along into this little con-game being played by the moneychangers,
and the public will once again be left holding the bag of bills to pay...
and the final upshot? we'll pay even more for books than we pay now,
and the poor among us will find that their access is sharply curtailed...
but, hey, what do poor people need books for anyway? let 'em eat cake.
-bowerbird
