Thank you for sharing this! In the future I’ll try to borrow more hard copies.
as of December 2019, OverDrive controlled digital lending for “more than 95% of public libraries in the US and Canada.
The article then digs into OverDrive’s removal of the ability for users to request books and more enshittification for both users and librarians. It’s now owned by notorious private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis.
I used to be all-in on e-reading, starting with my science fiction and mystery magazines back in the Palm Pilot days.
I now am back to almost exclusively reading hard copy (except for the aforementioned magazines, available directly from the publisher).
It’s a relatively simple process. I use the library’s own online search system to reserve and suggest books. In my case, there are actually 2 different systems: the local library’s own search and reservation system and Saskatchewan’s interlibrary search and reservation system. I use the latter for all my searches and reservations, because it gives me direct access to everything in the province. I use the former only for recommending books for purchase.
I swing by the library once a week to drop off anything I’ve borrowed and pick up anything that came in.
About a quarter of the books I recommend end up getting purchased by the local library (actually a regional collection of rural libraries). Most of the rest are supplied from the provincial archives (a copy of everything removed from library shelves is retained in the provincial archives) or through interprovincial loans. If things get really desperate, there is a process for getting hooked into international lending. I remember when my dad was building his replica of a late 1920s Bugatti, he ended up with books coming from the United States and even Europe. In one case, he got a personal photocopy of some mechanical drawings that came from a private library in Italy.
My e-reading is now mostly limited to what I can get directly from publishers (Dell for the aforementioned magazines, 2600 for their magazine).
One cool thing is that my reading habits have influenced what is actually on the shelves in our small village library. They used to have no science and very little history or biography. Now they carry enough locally to justify having small sections for those. It used to be a given that I never browsed their offerings, depending 100% on interlibrary loans. Now I have to take a few minutes to see if they’ve added anything interesting to the shelves. The librarian says that I’m not the only one who’s noticed and those categories are increasing in popularity, so it’s possible that I’ve even shifted local reading habits a bit!
My local library offers audiobooks through an app that ive been using a bunch and the city library has 3d printers that im going to try use instead of getting my own(for now, I’ll see how much I use it). Go explore your libraries. Theres more to them than books.
What I would like to see is a way to manage the borrowing of digital media in a “choose your own player” model. Even if that would mean having to pay for a compatible player.
For now, I stick with the libraries’ own search engines and recommendation systems and do as much borrowing via physical copy as possible.
Our local library in a small village is open only 15 hours a week. All of our trips in are planned around “book delivery day.” That’s the day all the books and other media that we’ve requested come in from other libraries around the province and across the country.
That’s also when the library is at it’s busiest, making it a good place to catch up on community events (ie gossip!). Some people have “coffee row”, others have “book day.” There is plenty of crossover, so there is no danger of missing out. :)
It’s a shame to not be able to pop in whenever, but that sounds really nice to see people.
I’m in a city, so we’ve got a few nearby that are open most days, but even still I love Saturdays because I know a lot of other families that go to the libraries on Saturday mornings, so I consistently run into other parent friends and their kids. Which is always a nice surprise.
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