Never Mind Legal Issues; Kindle not good choice for libraries. Period.
January 30th, 2008Rochelle Hartman - “How does it make any sort of sense for a library to loan out a $2500 resource to be used by one person at a time for 2-4 weeks?”
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January 30th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I’m not entirely sure what you’re referring to in your post. Kindles cost $400, not $2500, and I’d imagine the library system could get them much cheaper if they came up with a compelling argument to the manufacturer.
More importantly, why would the library loan the device? The better model is where the consumer already owns the device and the library only loans the “rights” to read the digital document on it. In this way, there are no physical assets for the library to keep track of at all.
There would still be plenty of logistical things to sort out, but disqualifying the Kindle based on cost (and a wildly inaccurate one at that) in a single scenario isn’t particularly valuable.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Hi Chris–I’m guessing you didn’t actually click through and read the whole thing. The $2500 figure comes from my calculating how much it would cost to load up the Kindle with books (supposedly holds 200 titles). I guessed at an average price of $10/title.
Libraries already loan ebooks from other vendors, to patrons who have ereaders. The Kindle ToS prohibits transferring content, so content and machine are a package deal. As someone who is responsible for a materials budget at a public library, I can’t justify loaning 200 titles to one person for 2-3 weeks. I just doesn’t make sense.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Aha, you’re correct, I didn’t click through the link - It’s my first time on this site and I didn’t realize the author’s name was the actual story link - I clicked the title of the article which went back here.
I agree that the model you talk about isn’t at all feasible. I do think the Kindle could be used as a content tool for libraries though, with some changes from Amazon. I would think they would be receptive to facilitating this as it would get more Kindles out there, and thus more potential Amazon customers.