Love Your Library
For Myriad Reasons
Maybe not a complete myriad. A myriad is ten thousand of something. I learned this reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. This is a direct example of how science fiction and fantasy enrich our lives.
I was rightly called out, following Tuesday’s Shelf Life about Kindle Unlimited, by longtime reader My Grandfather, who wrote to point out—correctly—that Kindle Unlimited is not the only nor the best way to read e-books books for free. Many if not most community and public libraries make e-books available for lending using the Libby application or one of its competitors (LibriVox, Hoopla, Chirp, Kobo, et cetera).
Books that are part of the Kindle Unlimited program can be available through the Libby application for library use (I checked The Notebook by Nicolas Sparks, which is part of KU, and found that it is part of the OverDrive lending catalog). This does not mean that all KU titles are available through your local library system, as libraries often decline to carry self-published titles as a general rule, even if those titles are digital.
As I mentioned Tuesday, Kindle Unlimited makes certain Kindle titles available as part of a subscription service. Subscribers pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to digital and audiobooks in the program. This is all true. However, as my grandfather rightly pointed out, one can also get practically unlimited access to digital and audiobooks, plus physical books and sometimes other cool stuff, at one’s local public community library.
I don’t know if everyone knows this but my dream job is to be librarian. I know it seems like I already have my dream job (editor) but since I’m actually an editor that’s not a dream job, it’s a waking job. I would have loved to be a librarian and every couple of years I kick around the idea of enrolling in an MLIS (Masters of Library and Information Science) so that one day I might start a brand new career as a librarian.
Some reasons I think librarianship would be a good fit for me:
Books
Cardigans
Cat-eye glasses
Organizing things in logical ways
Shushing people
Sometimes libraries have a cat that live there
If you think about it, being a librarian is the exact opposite of being a firefighter. Firefighters never wear cardigans or cat-eye glasses, they don’t shush people, and sometimes a dog lives in their workplace. Anyway I think libraries are really amazing and today I want to share my love of libraries as a follow-up to last Tuesday’s article about reading books for free.
Books that you read on Kindle Unlimited are not actually free; you have to pay a subscription fee to have access to the KU library of titles. This is true of the public library as well: The books and other materials you access there are not actually free. The public library is supported by tax dollars. Unlike Kindle Unlimited, which you can choose to subscribe to and pay for or not, you’re already paying for the public library as part of your tax bill. This is a great reason to use your local library services.
It’s also a great model. Everyone pays a little bit of taxes toward a resource we can all use. I know there are many people who feel taxes would be better a la carte: “I never use the library, why should my taxes go toward the library?!” People who don’t drive still have taxes that go toward roads. We all agree there should be roads, right? If there are roads, an ambulance can get to you when you have a heart attack. You know what your taxes don’t pay for? The ambulance. I think of the public libraries and public schools the same way: I don’t have any children, but my tax dollars that pay for the public schools to exist fund the education of the future home health aides who will be wiping my drool up and changing my adult diapers someday because I never had children.
When I was a kid, the library had books. I suppose it also had reference material and periodicals but that was not something I used the library for as a kid. I mostly used it for kids’ books I guess. I don’t really remember. It’s all a bit of a blur. As I got a little older, the library would have video tapes to rent but they were never the new releases you could get at Blockbuster. Everyone under thirty should just skip this paragraph by the way because I realize it has a lot of words that don’t mean anything to you. The library also had “books on tape,” which is what audiobooks used to be called. You couldn’t download them, you had to check out a big plastic clamshell case with like fifty cassette tapes inside and then put them in your tape deck and listen to them in order.
Today the library still has books and many libraries also have physical movie collections (no longer cassette-based, I assume, probably disc-based now). Most libraries also offer download services for their digital titles, which is what my grandfather uses. These services allow library cardholders to use an application like Libby on their computer or tablet to “hold” or “check out” e-books and audiobooks, which are then automatically “returned” to the library after a certain number of days.
As a person who used to work selling e-books to libraries and other institutions—and, incidentally, a person who used to work at a Blockbuster Video–style movie rental joint, which is relevant somehow—I can talk a little bit about why the e-book you want is not always available for you to read right away.
When libraries purchase an e-book title to make available to their patrons, they purchase a certain number of licenses. This is equivalent to buying multiple copies of the same print book. Video rental chains used to work this way, as well. When a new movie came out, the store would stock way up on tapes and DVDs of that title because the demand for it would be high at first.
As titles transitioned from new release to backlist, the store would shed copies by shrink-wrapping and selling them. Once a title was a few years old, the store would be down to two or three copies remained on shelves forever, because that’s what the video rental store was all about. You could be at a bar with your friends and someone would be like “Hey remember that old movie Commando? With Arnold Schwarzenegger?” And you’d all jump in the 1994 Plymouth Sundance and drive to Blockbuster and rent the tape and take it home and put it in your VCR and watch it on your 24-inch tube TV.
Anyway, logically, if there’s one digital, e-book copy of The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks there are infinity copies of The Notebook because that’s how digital files work and why NFTs aren’t a thing. Just because Cindy downloaded it to her Kindle using Libby and is reading it right now, there’s no technical reason why George could also download the same file to his Kindle and read it. However, making these digital copies infinitely available would tank author royalties and publisher revenues, which most people don’t want, because listen if Nicholas Sparks could no longer make royalties off his writing, I promise you he’d go find some other job and there’d be no new Nicholas Sparks books for all of us to enjoy, ever again.
Part of some librarians’ jobs is to acquire books for the library. It’s their job to understand what the patrons of the library want to read using past data to project future demand, and then purchase those books for the library. Digital access to the library’s titles through Libby works much the same way: The library pays for a certain number of licenses for each title and that’s how many are available. If the library only has one license for the e-book version of The Notebook then George has to wait till Cindy returns her “copy” before he can check it out and begin reading.
The library has a lot more to offer than books, even though books, I think, are what people most strongly associated with “the library.” But in addition to books, e-books, audiobooks, periodicals, movies, and references (all of which I’ve mentioned above), libraries may also offer:
Specialty tools to lend (for instance bakeware or gardening tools).
Internet access for those who don’t have it at home.
Printing services for those who don’t have access to a printer at home or work.
Information services courtesy of the staff librarians.
Free meeting spaces.
Access to online learning platforms like Rosetta Stone and Udemy.
Used book sales.
A place to donate your used books if you’re not sure how else to get rid of them.
Storytime (may or may not feature a Drag Queen).
If you read Tuesday’s Shelf Life and you were like “hmm, maybe I should try this Kindle Unlimited thing to read book for free,” you should definitely check out your community library first. My county library system allows users with an address in the county to sign up for a library card online and begin checking out e-books and audiobooks—you don’t even need to leave the house.
When I was in college, the New York Public Library system was just beginning to experiment with making digital resources available to library patrons using their library card number to log in. One of my professors was a recent NYU grad and shared his NYPL card number with students so we could get on an internet-enabled computer and access that wide world of resources. Real heroes don’t always wear capes.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.