I Love Libraries

Library of Congress, Jefferson's Library

I love visiting libraries. When I spent a week in Washington, D.C. my favorite part of the trip was downloading primary sources in the Library of Congress. In Burlington, Vermont. I spent a few hours scouring the stacks. There's just something about a lot of books in one place that I can't resist. However, E-books, those texts you can read from your Kindle or computer are increasingly taking the place of printed books, as far as publishers are concerned.

Business professor Randall Stross wrote a fascinating article in the Times, Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War (link here). Libraries want the increasingly popular E-books, but major publishers do not want to sell them to the libraries for the same terms they sell printed books. Libraries therefore don't have the most popular titles as E-books. They do, however, have plenty of E-books from smaller publishers, books that are less well known.

I checked the availability of the top ten nonfiction E-book bestsellers as listed by the New York Times Book Review, December 4-10. My county library's performance is in noted in red.

1		STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson. (Simon and Schuster.)
		The county library has no E-book. It does have 82 copies and an audio book. All copies are checked out, and there are 162 holds on the book
2		HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent. (Thomas Nelson.)
		The county library has an E-book and print copies.
3		KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. (Holt.)
		The county library has no E-book. It does have 13 copies and an audio book. All copies are checked out, and there are 14 holds on the book.
4		CATHERINE THE GREAT, by Robert K. Massie. (Random House Publishing.)
		The county library has no E-book. It does have 36 copies. All copies are checked out, and there are 74 holds on the book.
5		UNBROKEN, by Laura Hillenbrand. (Random House Publishing.)
		The county library has an E-book and print copies.
6		THE DEVIL IN PEW NUMBER SEVEN, by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo with Bob DeMoss. (Tyndale.)
		The library system does not carry this title at all.
7		THINKING, FAST AND SLOW, by Daniel Kahneman. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
		The county library has no E-book. It does have 37 copies and an audio book. All copies are checked out, and there are 71 holds on the book.
8		DECEMBER 1941, by Craig Shirley. (Thomas Nelson.)
		The library system does not carry this title at all.
9		IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS, by Erik Larson. (Crown Publishing.)
		The county library has an E-book, audio book, and print copies.
10		BOOMERANG, by Michael Lewis. (W. W. Norton and Company.) The county library has no E-book. It does have 66 copies and six audio books. All copies are checked out, and there are 84 holds on the book.
		I believe our county library system does pretty well in keeping within budget and purchasing and releasing the popular titles. The top ten books the library system did not have turned out to be less important books. A patron may borrow a few of the top E-books immediately and eventually borrow all of the top ten books by placing a hold and waiting three to six weeks. Those that want a book that was a hit a couple of years ago can read it immediately. Feel free to comment. How good a job does your library do in releasing best sellers and E-books?