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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever. Why do it for e-books? Cause, wee, they don't take up shelf space in the stacks?

If a book is popular, let the patrons "buy down" their own copy, or else wait behind 90 other people.

There is always bittorrent and filez websites: the real libraries of the digital age.

There are also ... craploads of other worthwhile books you could explore that are not held.

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> It's beyond odd; it's simply idiotic. You would not "buy down" holds for physical books, or not to a ridiculous degree. If there are 100 holds for some book, you're not going to go out and buy 75 or whatever.

Libraries certainly do this. Might not be at (your suggested) 75/100 rates, but if a physical book is popular, library systems do purchase more copies.

Those same libraries can then resell their excess copies a few years later at a Friends of the Library sale and recoup a few dollars. This isn’t possible with e-books currently.

Are they prohibited from reselling the licenses?

Depends slightly where you are, but often the ebook licenses are time limited, often to 1 year. So not only can't you resell the licenses, you have to keep rebuying them.

Public libraries really should stay away from e-anything, in my opinion. No library would purchase anything of the sort under my watch.

Obviously, since patrons check it out, there is demand for it. Well, so what? There is demand for cocaine and porn; should public libraries offer that?

Demand for something doesn't ipso facto oblige a library to provide it.

> there is demand for it. Well, so what?

Of course demand for something doesn't make it something that should be free.

On the other hand, your arguments against e-libraries are just as vague and lacking in implication.

Libraries promote literacy and/or learning with every book read. Even as a source of entertainment, it promotes a richer culture. All of which does have a total health of society benefit.

> Public libraries really should stay away from e-anything, in my opinion. No library would purchase anything of the sort under my watch.

Why not? What are your goals of a public library?

Strictly physical items. Books, musical instruments, power tools ... no e-garbage.

Nothing with an expiring license or ongoing fees.

That seems to be your implementation. What are your goals?

That doesn't really matter; as you just noted, the library gets a few dollars by doing so. $4 after two years is an amount that, if it went away, wouldn't matter.

Then why aren't they reducing the maximum number of non-digital holds? (or did they already have that limit?)

They likely don't have an issue with physical holds. Digital holds are just too easy.

Santa Clara county (California):

> Limits. You may borrow at any one time, 100 total items per library card, including up to 10 console games and up to 30 DVDs/Blu-rays.

https://sccld.org/borrowing-policy/

Borrowing limits are not holds.

Also, per-borrower limits are different from per-book limits.

A limit of 20 holds for a given e-book means that at most 20 people can wait in a queue for the opportunity to be the next borrower.

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