Not in the US. US libraries are protected under what is referred to as the "first sale" doctrine, meaning that once a physical object is purchased, it's the purchasers prerogative to do whatever they like with it, including loan it. Publishers and libraries have a bit of a love/hate relationship. Even though publishers would like to prevent loaning, libraries buy a lot of material and also purchase quite a bit from the back catalog of titles that would otherwise not sell much any more.
Also not in Sweden, but the government uses a small trick where tax money is diverted to Swedish (exclusively) authors that have a book loaned. This is technically not part of copyright law since Berne convention prohibits countries from making a distinction between authors of different nations.
Are there a lot of writers publishing Swedish only? I'm learning Swedish very slowly, and would love to know how the Nordic languages are fairing amidst English's cultural domination.
It depends on what you would consider a lot. The swedish writers organisation has about 3000 members [1] and 1720 Swedish books of fiction was published 2016 [2].
If Elsevier or IEEE had a subscription model priced like Netflix, I'd be glad to give them my money. But as it is, access to academic and research material at low rates, to me is a question of survival. I'm glad and extremely grateful for the work of scholars like Elbakyan. They are basically doing God's work as far as I am concerned.
When you sign up for IEEE they SPAM you relentlessly for years even after you close your account. I'm not a fan of the IEEE for that reason or for their highly conservative political stance.
Yes, they use call centers with pressure tactics to get you to keep it up. Almost all EE research is done via an IEEE whitepaper though, so not much of a choice.
Negotiated might be strong term. Most libraries work through middlemen who do that negotiation and are then given a rate that they can take or leave. There's no "shopping around" for digital media since publishers control the pricing and availability. This is proving to be a budgeting challenge since digital media is more expensive that physical. There are no discounts from wholesalers for bulk purchasing. Many libraries get physical media at up to a 40% discount from retail because they buy so much.
Of course, digital media does not need to be maintained. It does not need to be cataloged and reshelved; it does not wear out or get damaged. But libraries are still adapting to this shift since there still is a great deal of physical media checking out and that staff is still needed.
The library landscape is surprisingly varied in the United States. Big systems such as New York, Chicago and Los Angelos exert a huge amount of control on the "middle men" that service them (and a 40% discount is where all systems start and always have). This is of course not surprising. Like all parts of the book industry the ecosystem surrounding libraries is changing very fast.
The digital media side is not as clear as you are making it out to be. Publishers do not in fact set the pricing and availability, because the publishers don't particularly want to be in the business of servicing libraries (just like they don't want to be in the business of library binding and cataloging) so they have to allow third parties the ability to do some negotiations. In many ways its just like physical books (the cost of physical books is largely not the act of creating the physical copy).
The difference is that the classic rift between desires of libraries and publishers is more stark with electronic books. Libraries want to provide access as cheaply as possible usually as a governmental agency and publishers want to have a profitable business.
That doesn't even begin to talk about the existential crisis libraries are going through. Its a fairly interesting thing to watch as an outside observer.
I don't work in this space but my wife does and I've had drinks with enough publishers, jobbers and librarians to see it as fascinating
I am a librarian who works with digital media, so I see this industry close up as part of my job. So a few things:
The vast majority of libraries are not NYPL, LAPL, King County PL, etc. Most are medium to small and servicing almost every town in the United States. They are arranged in a dizzying array of geographic, bureaucratic and budgetary configurations. I once worked with a library that was a unified system with shelf level access to items, but every municipality funded its own local branch, so money went into a central system and had to be accounted for when purchasing items. They handled 15 different budgets. It was staggering.
This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials. And though there are sales, digital materials are unquestionably more expensive. I work in a system with a service population of about 500,000 (it's a statewide consortia of local libraries), and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title. If the title is from Penguin Random House, it will likely cost more than $50 per copy, leading to thousands of dollars just to keep hold times down to a few months. If the publisher is Harper Collins or Simon and Schuster the price will be more reasonable, but we lose copies as we check them out. For example, say we buy 15 copies that have 52 checkouts each. As soon as we've checked those 15 copies out 52 times, we're down to 14 copies. It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this. And our that our most popular device, the Kindle, is controlled by a vendor that is fanatical about its control over the service and was dragged kicking and screaming into working with libraries.
But physical materials still remain our most popular items. E-book sales have stagnated at around 35% (not including Amazon's nebulous self-publishing numbers) and we've seen the same in libraries. That makes it difficult to shift staff. As a colleague of mine once said, "In government I can't lay everyone off and rehire people with the right skills". Over time it will work out, but in the short term the budgetary challenges are limiting access.
All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
> This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials.
But how is that different than your previous interactions with the wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of physical books because its more new.
> and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title
How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books. I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?
> It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this
Sure, but if you could exert perfect influence you'd get the books for free ;)
Look, I'm not saying we've reached an optimal system for ebooks and libraries but its fairly easy to understand the publishers position. Too many people get caught up in the physical costs of books, which are not what the publisher is worried about. They are worried about recouping all the pre-production IP costs and marketing dollars they put into the things that don't sell. That they've fallen back onto a model that poorly mimics physical books is probably unfortunate, but completely unsurprising.
> All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
Completely and totally agree and can think of few groups of people more likely to adapt to the new information dense world than librarians. I'm much more worried about the publishers...