Let Amazon Ship ALL Books to Patrons
August 9th, 2006Of course, this is a great idea. I’m all in favor of sending books to library users via the mail. What’s better is that Amazon will pay the shipping costs. 
But what about books that the library already owns? I think we should be shipping those as well. I recently read an article in the New York Times about how the postal service is running a killer business these days because they are working with the likes of Amazon and E-bay to easily ship materials.
I’m not going to buy the “it’s too expensive to ship books to library users” because we haven’t tried it yet. I’d love to see huge library systems sign contracts with the USPS or Fed Ex for them to send library materials via the mail. Libraries could even MAKE money out of the deal if they sign with big shipping companies.