Yet, compared to Netflix, our selection is lousy, availability is a joke, and distribution methods? Ha. That’s just one example of many instances where our users are not getting the ROI they may be looking for.

I’ve been thinking about this and I disagree. Library collections and circulation policies serve library users very well. They only seem lousy to non-library users.

At my local library, almost all DVDs are in circulation, so you have to place a hold to get one. When it arrives, you have a week to pick it up and 3 weeks to watch it, ample time even if I’ve checked out a season of a television series.

This works incredibly well. I don’t pick out a movie I want to watch next, I pick out 15, and I’ll watch whichever one comes fist. If 5 come in one week, I have all the more to choose from. The library is convenient to me (hrm, I work there), so this beats the pants off of subscribing to NetFlix for $60-$288/yr for 1-4 DVDs at a time.

The library wins, at least until we’re all ready for downloadable movies on demand – I’ll give it 12 months.

I think that DVDs drive circulation because they are easy to consume in the time that the library gives the patron to watch them, even if you only circ DVDs for 2 days.

It takes a lot longer to read a book than it does to watch a movie, unless you are a reader of romance, mystery, science fiction, children’s literature or Harry Potter, and note that these genres are popular in libraries as well.

If libraries are concerned with competing with other literature-distributing organizations, we should look to make our materials easier to consume, and that includes becoming more convenient to more people.

A new ILS can address this partly, but the problem is bigger than that. ILS vendors know this and so do library managers – if you want to reach more library users, the conventional way to do it is to open a new branch.

In terms of necessary-but-painful breaks with the past, public libraries need to move their emphasis in providing information away from being ‘containers’ to being one in a vast network of ‘conduits’. I’m still thinking through what this metaphor means, particularly in regard to online presence.

I imagine information, info-seekers and content-creators as water falling, flooding, pooling and trickling through a vast space. The space is filled with different-sized containers, overflows, drains, leaky pipes, mains pipes, juntions, all sloping and trying to maximise the flows that pass through. All of this is constantly shifting, reassembling itself into new configurations of convenience.

In Web2.0, information conduits and containers must be able to rapidly reposition themselves to catch and carry some of the myriad flows of information and individuals. This repositioning can be achieved partly through maintaining authority, interest and relevance, and partly through being an effective conduit to external sites of authority, interest and relevance.

Sorry for the elaborate metahor, but I think it’s useful in communicating about drastic possible changes in what we do.

And I am sure you are, indeed, using every last cent very wisely.

In fact, you bring up one of the very reasons that we simply cannot compete with commercial services. We just don’t have the money to do it.

So we need to approach lending from an entirely different point of view, while expanding the role of the public library in the community beyond simply a place to “borrow.”

That’s why I found Roy’s post so applicable to us as well as our vendors. Status quo will bury the public library.

Wow, what happy planet is this? Property owners in my county pay an average of $28/year. According to the ALA, this is about typical, maybe a little better than average. Let me tell you, as a collection manager, I am doing EVERYTHING I CAN to stretch those tax dollars in every way possible. We constantly get variations on the theme of “wow, I didn’t know you could do that/had that/can get that/knew about that/can direct me to the resource I need!” That tells me that our biggest failure is in outreach and marketing the materials and services we already have. We’re working on creative solutions to that all the time, because we simply don’t have the budget to throw more man-hours at the problem. No complacency here!

(Pondering what I’d do with three to four times my current budget)

What if our users decided that the $80-$100 allocated to the library from their property taxes would personally serve them better if it were spent on a Netflix subscription?

Indiana residents thought just that and decided to take the school system with ‘em: Indiana’s “Circuit Breaker” Law

(I’d link to the local paper, but the articles only last for a week, then you have to pay for it.)