This past Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Southeastern Massachusetts Libraries Legislative Breakfast about some of the technology challenges facing Massachusetts libraries.
The breakfast is an opportunity for library supporters and advocates to inform state legislators of essential programs and services provided to residents by school, public, and academic libraries. I have attended many of these events over the years, but I usually take a back seat while users share their stories of how libraries have impacted their lives. After all, the users are the ones who benefit from library services and should be the people who tell their stories. However, this year was an exception because what some of the information we needed to share with legislators was not information the public is necessarily aware of, though it certainly impacts their ability to use their libraries. I focused on two challenges facing library consortia: securing our systems against cybersecurity threats and keeping up with demand for eBooks and eAudio.
The response to my eBook/eAudio talk was a reminder that, although most librarians are aware of the pricing / licensing challenges that come with maintaining a digital collection, most users have no idea why libraries struggle to keep up with demand for these collections. As a result, I’m sharing the content of this portion of my speech, with a bit more detail, so that the others can more thoroughly understand why libraries are advocating for more reasonable terms in their licensing contracts.
My place of work, the SAILS library network, was early to offer a digital download service – the collection got its start in 2005 and has grown to include 186,000 e-books, 44,000 digital audiobooks, and 4,300 magazines. To provide some context, this collection started before there was an iPhone or a Kindle or an iPad. It was mostly used by early technology adopters who were downloading digital audiobooks to their MP3 players.
Why did our libraries adopt this service before most people even had the devices to use them? Basically, our libraries are committed to providing patrons with the materials they need in whatever format they prefer. Every reader has a preferred way of consuming books, and we’ll do what we can to accommodate that preference.
Although there weren’t many people using this collection when it was launched in 2005, as time went on and people started buying their Kindles and their tablets, our libraries were ready for them. The use of this collection has dramatically increased over time. There was a significant increase in 2018: that’s when SAILS started sharing its digital materials with patrons of other consortia through the LEA program. We then see another big jump in 2020, when the pandemic closed libraries and sent everyone home, making our digital collection the only way people could access reading material from their libraries. As you can see from the below chart, this wave of new adopters from 2020 is still using eBooks and eAudio, and the use of our digital collection continues to grow.
The challenge we face with maintaining this collection is, when we purchase digital titles, we don’t own them, we license them. With other formats, libraries have a choice as to where they can purchase their materials. They do not need to use a library-specific vendor if the pricing isn’t favorable, and, to the contrary, pricing for physical books is usually heavily discounted through library vendors. Once the library owns a physical book, it can lend it as many times as it wants until the copy becomes unusable, gets lost, or is no longer relevant to the collection. This model is what makes libraries what I consider to be the best value for our tax dollars.
Under the licensing model, libraries are unable to purchase their titles from the same retailers that the average consumer uses. We need to license our digital materials through library markets, and the prices and licensing terms are quite different. As an example, if a consumer purchases Colleen Hoover’s Verity through Amazon, it will cost $14.99, and you will most likely be able to keep it forever (or as long as your device supports it). A library, on the other hand, must pay $65 for this title and can only keep it for 24 months. In order to make it available to patrons after 24 months, libraries need to repurchase the license at the exact same price.
Another example is the audiobook Fairy Tale by Stephen King. An average consumer can purchase it for $26.90. The library purchase price is $129.99. Again, the library license for the audio book expires after 24 months. As of January 24, 2023, we had 122 active holds on this digital audiobook. Our libraries need to maintain multiple copies of this very pricey title to meet user demand. They have no other choice but to pay this high price.
Of course, when giving my talk, I selected the titles that best demonstrate the discrepancy between consumer and library pricing for eBooks. All titles are not as expensive as the two I highlighted above. But more comprehensive surveys of these pricing models all draw the same conclusion: the wait time is incredibly long for bestsellers in these collections because the high prices in the library marketplace make it impossible for libraries to keep up with demand. This blog post from Jennie Rothschild analyzes a year’s worth of data for titles that made the best seller list, and Readers First maintains a Publisher Price Watch comparing the average physical price to the average digital price available to libraries.
High prices are not the only problem. The three ebooks highlighted below, which are current bestsellers for the Kindle, are examples of titles that libraries aren’t even able to buy in an eBook or digital audiobook format. If a patron requests one of these titles, the library would be required to lend them a physical copy because the publishers have simply decided against making them available through library vendors.
The next example shows three titles that our consortium purchased many years ago, but they expired after 24 months without ever being used by a patron.
These titles are all eBooks for children. Until the pandemic, children just weren’t heavy users of our digital collection. When schools and libraries closed for COVID, SAILS saw a 130% increase in checkouts for children’s digital materials. These titles were exactly what children and parents were looking for when they were unable to visit the library in person, but they couldn’t borrow these particular titles, even though we had previously paid for them, because they had expired before their time had come.
During a four-month survey period last year, SAILS found it was spending an average of $4,500 per month just to replace titles that had expired while patrons still had holds on them.
One argument made to support these short-term licenses is that libraries often need to re-purchase physical books because of wear and tear, which is true, though even the biggest bestsellers usually get more than 2 years of use. But there are no allowances in these licenses made for low-circulating materials that would see very little wear and tear in a physical environment, and libraries just aren’t in a position of power to negotiate more reasonable terms for these licenses. Digital books and audio are here to stay, and libraries will continue to allocate a significant portion of their collection budgets to purchase these materials – they just want more reasonable terms for these licenses so that they can better meet user demand .
As an individual consumer, I might decide to forego a purchase if I view the terms as unreasonable; as a librarian, I just can’t make that choice on behalf of the communities I serve. So we do the best we can to keep up with the demand from our users, navigating the different licensing models that are available, in an attempt to get the best value for our dollars.
Funding is helpful, but the current licensing model is just unsustainable. More reasonable licensing is critical to ensuring that libraries can continue providing a good value on the tax dollar to our communities.
When library patrons and supporters learn about these pricing challenges, they often ask us how they can help. Some even go so far as to suggest that they stop borrowing from these digital collections, but please continue to use them. Until now, we’ve only been able to tell them to contact publishers (please, don’t blame the authors) if they want to express their dissatisfaction with the pricing models. However, over the past couple of years, there have been efforts in different states around the U.S. to tackle this problem at the legislative level.
On the same day I spoke to Massachusetts legislators and library supporters about this challenge,, Representative Ruth Balser (D-12th Middlesex) filed “An Act empowering library access to electronic books and digital audiobooks.” The bill still needs to undergo a long process as it makes it way through the legislature, but its passage could provide some relief to libraries trying to keep up with user demand for these collections.