16 ms·

"What do holds have to do with the cost of digital books? This may seem surprising, but patron holds are the single biggest factor in rising costs. To maintain

by dmbche 2y ago

"What do holds have to do with the cost of digital books? This may seem surprising, but patron holds are the single biggest factor in rising costs. To maintain reasonable wait times, the Library buys additional licenses of a digital title when patrons place more holds on it. That means that when hundreds of patrons place holds on a single New York Times bestseller, the costs of “buying down the holds” can quickly become astronomical." How odd - I know it's the licenscing and I can understand the reasoning behind, but at a distance it seems like ritual almost. When they get the e-book, the data is there, and when you hold it, you get a copy, the "original" is untouched, but the library has to act as if it was unavailable. It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds.

cortesoft 2y ago
It is how everything in the digital age works - artificial scarcity. It does seem silly, although I also struggle to think how else we can make the whole thing work.
- waveBidder 2y ago
  a couple of alternatives are donation models (patreon), or quadratic funding, where a common pool is used to provide the incentive to contribute to the creation of a public good at the actual value you get out of it (see Radical Markets for a description). there's definitely others- the main problem is there are powerful actors who benefit greatly from the status quo, and coordination is hard.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Often times those powerful actors are the authors and creators. There is very little that the traditional publishers can do to stop someone if they want to open source a book, or give libraries infinite copies. I'm a big fan of alternatives, but have come to realize there often valid reasons why they aren't used.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  Another way to make it work is the way Free Software tends to be monetized: by selling labor (real scarcity) instead of licenses (imaginary scarcity).
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    How would that work for large scale, slow and/or risky return projects? We have several systems for matching resources to production because there isn't any single way that works best. But it is interesting to try to stretch each model as far as it can, for best results we can get.
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      I'm not sure I see why slow projects are a problem when you're being paid for labor. You just set expectations, and keep the customer updated on the honest status of the project (give them code they can run, even if it doesn't yet do everything they want). Can you elaborate on what you mean by "risky"? I can only think of projects that don't yet have a customer. In that case, you just don't build it until there is a customer need for it. Architects don't speculatively design buildings hoping to find a customer who wants it. I think we would be better off if the same was true of software.
      - Nevermark 2y ago
        Ah, by risky I meant software developed without paying customers up front. I am curious if there is a open source type model for getting a higher return for doing riskier work, as economics would suggest is fair and also helpful. That is obviously a typical closed source situation, but people find creative solutions. Not talking about selling services, but somehow compensating for writing the code after the fact, risk adjusted, while keeping the code itself free. Might need a temporarily hybrid license to accomplish this. I.e. the code is obligated to become free, after some fixed license fees have covered the work cost and risk.
        Zambyte 2y ago
greyface- 2y ago
People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal. I agree that they've sort of lost the plot by taking this digital lending stuff seriously.
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  I imagine today you would have libraries, but they would be like Netflix with maybe some small physical outposts in really major cities. So instead of the Seattle Library, it would be the some big tech nonprofit at best that would lisence content in bulk.
- sneak 2y ago
  It’s the same with search engines. Look how the news aggregation business has shaken out.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal ARPANET was gracefully turned over, for the most part, to the commons, as was GPS. Public libraries are a millenium old as a concept [1], but only half a century (EDIT: millenium) old as a continuous practice [2]. We're not at the tail end of a collective-action halcyon; we're in the centre of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library
  - markatto 2y ago
    A half century? Surely that must be a typo?
    - geraldwhen 2y ago
      Why? People have been illiterate for most of human history. So even if libraries existed, they could not be used.
gostsamo 2y ago
> It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds. A side note, there is some sense in the artificial sounds of the ev engines. I'm blind and if not for them, I might be dead in five years, together with many no so attentive people.
- brewdad 2y ago
  No doubt the external artificial noises serve a valuable purpose for both the blind and the sometimes inattentive. The artificial sounds pumped into the cabin to simulate a naturally aspirated V8 are nonsensical.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    I'm not fully against the idea. Audio feedback has been a part of the experience of driving for so long. A lot of people probably get a feeling of "I'm going fast" based partially from audio queues. Having that audio feedback of the car speeding up rapidly might help make people realize they're accelerating a bit hard or whatever. It can be easy to not realize how fast an EV can accelerate with its instant torque I do think it should be entirely optional though.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      I love driving Subarus because their boxer engines are noisier than most car engines, likewise diesel cars like a Ford F-350. The auditory feedback is faster and easier to process than visually seeing or physically feeling the car move, I can respond quicker and drive more accurately hence it's safer. It's also easier to notice if something is wrong or strange with the engine. Consequently, I hate driving quiet cars (sedans especially) and find EVs annoying because they have the high pitched, hard to hear motor whine that takes away some of my attention.
      - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
        I haven’t noticed this in my i4. There is a bit of a whine when you accelerate, but it doesn’t hang around at all. But I bought this car for the soundproofing, so maybe I’m just getting that. I’ve never tried driving a model 3 before.
kazinator 2y ago
It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Why do it for e-books? Cause, wee, they don't take up shelf space in the stacks? If a book is popular, let the patrons "buy down" their own copy, or else wait behind 90 other people. There is always bittorrent and filez websites: the real libraries of the digital age. There are also ... craploads of other worthwhile books you could explore that are not held.
- LeafItAlone 2y ago
  > It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Libraries certainly do this. Might not be at (your suggested) 75/100 rates, but if a physical book is popular, library systems do purchase more copies.
  - brewdad 2y ago
    Those same libraries can then resell their excess copies a few years later at a Friends of the Library sale and recoup a few dollars. This isn’t possible with e-books currently.
    - itsgrimetime 2y ago
      Are they prohibited from reselling the licenses?
      - dagw 2y ago
        Depends slightly where you are, but often the ebook licenses are time limited, often to 1 year. So not only can't you resell the licenses, you have to keep rebuying them.
        kazinator 2y ago
EnigmaFlare 2y ago
Don't forget that printed books also have license fees included in their price. The printer also has the data there and could just print extra copies and sell them at cost+profit but they're not allowed to because copyright. I don't think a latest bestseller should be in a library in the first place. Maybe a couple of years later when the hype has died down if it's still a good book, they can have it for the few people who want it for what it is rather than being trendy. But I never expect libraries to have anything new and fashionable. Movies and music too are always old or obscure, at least where I am. It's funny that these artificial licensing constraints for software seem much more natural and acceptable. Especially software where the complete thing is distributed for free but you have to buy a license to activate it. It's even more in-you-face with network licenses where every computer in an organization can have and use a copy but you have to wait for somebody else to finish using theirs before you can use it on your computer. Oh, and then maintenance fees, and lapsed maintenance fee fees, and different prices depending on whether you buy a network or node-locked license.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  once libraries exist, they want to perpetuate their existence (or jobs, at least) so they chase the popular in search of more library "views" which justifies their existence. I'm not anti library, but this is why they do stuff like lend out power tools.
  - EnigmaFlare 2y ago
    Kind of but they're meeting a need even if it's a bit of an inefficient way to do it. I don't think most library visitors are there for books anymore, at least not where I go. It's adults using the web, kids playing videogames, parents entertaining their kids with the toys, local bored people chatting to the librarians, club meetings, moving screenings, etc. One librarian told me they're really now a "community center" rather than a library and that they don't have that old-fashioned rule of being quiet in the library.
  - esrauch 2y ago
    You make it sound nefarious for them to loan power tools somehow, while it seems like it's just an identified community need niche that they can service that no other organization will, the same as offering free tax advice or ESL classes or anything else.
kazinator 2y ago
> To maintain reasonable wait times Cutting the queue to an arbitrary number does nothing for wait times! All it does is throw away information about the demand. If there is a 15 hold limit, and it's fully occupied, we don't know whether the demand for the book is exactly 15, or whether it's actually 45, with an invisible backlog of 30 people having been turned away from being formally registered in the hold queue. Those waiting to read the book now face an extra hurdle: they must repeatedly play a time-wasting lottery in order to obtain a spot in the queue. Someone who had been trying to get into the queue for weeks can have it sniped away by someone who gets in on the first try. The only reason for trimming hold queues is if there is some resource problem; like they are running out of space in the database for tracking holds or something.
- bbatsell 2y ago
  They are reducing the number of media items a single person can have on hold, not the total number of holds on a single item.

by dmbche 2y ago

cortesoft 2y ago

It is how everything in the digital age works - artificial scarcity. It does seem silly, although I also struggle to think how else we can make the whole thing work.

waveBidder 2y ago
a couple of alternatives are donation models (patreon), or quadratic funding, where a common pool is used to provide the incentive to contribute to the creation of a public good at the actual value you get out of it (see Radical Markets for a description). there's definitely others- the main problem is there are powerful actors who benefit greatly from the status quo, and coordination is hard.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Often times those powerful actors are the authors and creators. There is very little that the traditional publishers can do to stop someone if they want to open source a book, or give libraries infinite copies. I'm a big fan of alternatives, but have come to realize there often valid reasons why they aren't used.
Zambyte 2y ago
Another way to make it work is the way Free Software tends to be monetized: by selling labor (real scarcity) instead of licenses (imaginary scarcity).
- Nevermark 2y ago
  How would that work for large scale, slow and/or risky return projects? We have several systems for matching resources to production because there isn't any single way that works best. But it is interesting to try to stretch each model as far as it can, for best results we can get.
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    I'm not sure I see why slow projects are a problem when you're being paid for labor. You just set expectations, and keep the customer updated on the honest status of the project (give them code they can run, even if it doesn't yet do everything they want). Can you elaborate on what you mean by "risky"? I can only think of projects that don't yet have a customer. In that case, you just don't build it until there is a customer need for it. Architects don't speculatively design buildings hoping to find a customer who wants it. I think we would be better off if the same was true of software.
    - Nevermark 2y ago
      Ah, by risky I meant software developed without paying customers up front. I am curious if there is a open source type model for getting a higher return for doing riskier work, as economics would suggest is fair and also helpful. That is obviously a typical closed source situation, but people find creative solutions. Not talking about selling services, but somehow compensating for writing the code after the fact, risk adjusted, while keeping the code itself free. Might need a temporarily hybrid license to accomplish this. I.e. the code is obligated to become free, after some fixed license fees have covered the work cost and risk.
      - Zambyte 2y ago

greyface- 2y ago

People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal. I agree that they've sort of lost the plot by taking this digital lending stuff seriously.

MattGaiser 2y ago
I imagine today you would have libraries, but they would be like Netflix with maybe some small physical outposts in really major cities. So instead of the Seattle Library, it would be the some big tech nonprofit at best that would lisence content in bulk.
sneak 2y ago
It’s the same with search engines. Look how the news aggregation business has shaken out.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> People say that if public libraries didn't already exist and were proposed today as a new thing, they'd be found illegal ARPANET was gracefully turned over, for the most part, to the commons, as was GPS. Public libraries are a millenium old as a concept [1], but only half a century (EDIT: millenium) old as a continuous practice [2]. We're not at the tail end of a collective-action halcyon; we're in the centre of it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Knowledge [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library
- markatto 2y ago
  A half century? Surely that must be a typo?
  - geraldwhen 2y ago
    Why? People have been illiterate for most of human history. So even if libraries existed, they could not be used.

gostsamo 2y ago

> It feels like how electric cars add artifical engine sounds. A side note, there is some sense in the artificial sounds of the ev engines. I'm blind and if not for them, I might be dead in five years, together with many no so attentive people.

brewdad 2y ago
No doubt the external artificial noises serve a valuable purpose for both the blind and the sometimes inattentive. The artificial sounds pumped into the cabin to simulate a naturally aspirated V8 are nonsensical.
- vel0city 2y ago
  I'm not fully against the idea. Audio feedback has been a part of the experience of driving for so long. A lot of people probably get a feeling of "I'm going fast" based partially from audio queues. Having that audio feedback of the car speeding up rapidly might help make people realize they're accelerating a bit hard or whatever. It can be easy to not realize how fast an EV can accelerate with its instant torque I do think it should be entirely optional though.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    I love driving Subarus because their boxer engines are noisier than most car engines, likewise diesel cars like a Ford F-350. The auditory feedback is faster and easier to process than visually seeing or physically feeling the car move, I can respond quicker and drive more accurately hence it's safer. It's also easier to notice if something is wrong or strange with the engine. Consequently, I hate driving quiet cars (sedans especially) and find EVs annoying because they have the high pitched, hard to hear motor whine that takes away some of my attention.
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      I haven’t noticed this in my i4. There is a bit of a whine when you accelerate, but it doesn’t hang around at all. But I bought this car for the soundproofing, so maybe I’m just getting that. I’ve never tried driving a model 3 before.

kazinator 2y ago

It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Why do it for e-books? Cause, wee, they don't take up shelf space in the stacks? If a book is popular, let the patrons "buy down" their own copy, or else wait behind 90 other people. There is always bittorrent and filez websites: the real libraries of the digital age. There are also ... craploads of other worthwhile books you could explore that are not held.

LeafItAlone 2y ago
> It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Libraries certainly do this. Might not be at (your suggested) 75/100 rates, but if a physical book is popular, library systems do purchase more copies.
- brewdad 2y ago
  Those same libraries can then resell their excess copies a few years later at a Friends of the Library sale and recoup a few dollars. This isn’t possible with e-books currently.
  - itsgrimetime 2y ago
    Are they prohibited from reselling the licenses?
    - dagw 2y ago
      Depends slightly where you are, but often the ebook licenses are time limited, often to 1 year. So not only can't you resell the licenses, you have to keep rebuying them.
      - kazinator 2y ago

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

Don't forget that printed books also have license fees included in their price. The printer also has the data there and could just print extra copies and sell them at cost+profit but they're not allowed to because copyright. I don't think a latest bestseller should be in a library in the first place. Maybe a couple of years later when the hype has died down if it's still a good book, they can have it for the few people who want it for what it is rather than being trendy. But I never expect libraries to have anything new and fashionable. Movies and music too are always old or obscure, at least where I am. It's funny that these artificial licensing constraints for software seem much more natural and acceptable. Especially software where the complete thing is distributed for free but you have to buy a license to activate it. It's even more in-you-face with network licenses where every computer in an organization can have and use a copy but you have to wait for somebody else to finish using theirs before you can use it on your computer. Oh, and then maintenance fees, and lapsed maintenance fee fees, and different prices depending on whether you buy a network or node-locked license.

fsckboy 2y ago
once libraries exist, they want to perpetuate their existence (or jobs, at least) so they chase the popular in search of more library "views" which justifies their existence. I'm not anti library, but this is why they do stuff like lend out power tools.
- EnigmaFlare 2y ago
  Kind of but they're meeting a need even if it's a bit of an inefficient way to do it. I don't think most library visitors are there for books anymore, at least not where I go. It's adults using the web, kids playing videogames, parents entertaining their kids with the toys, local bored people chatting to the librarians, club meetings, moving screenings, etc. One librarian told me they're really now a "community center" rather than a library and that they don't have that old-fashioned rule of being quiet in the library.
- esrauch 2y ago
  You make it sound nefarious for them to loan power tools somehow, while it seems like it's just an identified community need niche that they can service that no other organization will, the same as offering free tax advice or ESL classes or anything else.

kazinator 2y ago

> To maintain reasonable wait times Cutting the queue to an arbitrary number does nothing for wait times! All it does is throw away information about the demand. If there is a 15 hold limit, and it's fully occupied, we don't know whether the demand for the book is exactly 15, or whether it's actually 45, with an invisible backlog of 30 people having been turned away from being formally registered in the hold queue. Those waiting to read the book now face an extra hurdle: they must repeatedly play a time-wasting lottery in order to obtain a spot in the queue. Someone who had been trying to get into the queue for weeks can have it sniped away by someone who gets in on the first try. The only reason for trimming hold queues is if there is some resource problem; like they are running out of space in the database for tracking holds or something.

bbatsell 2y ago
They are reducing the number of media items a single person can have on hold, not the total number of holds on a single item.