Comments on: Library spending and usage: or, for goodness sake, don’t increase the e-book budget quite yet

By: Robin Sayer

Robin Sayer — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 06:40:57 +0000

When online leading booksellers like Amazon are able to sell 5 billion pounds of goods (including books) to UK citizens but only pay 11 million tax – plus claim to be loss making when they’re valued at 250 billion dollars then there is something wrong.

The Libraries shouldn’t be struggling for funding when ebooks, internet book resellers, audio books and so on are shifting so much product for so little tax.

By: Puzzled

Puzzled — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 21:52:01 +0000

Thanks Ian and thanks to Tim for passing on that suggestion. Of course I am not condoning that a book fund should be reduced but the statistics of lower issues could be used as an argument anywhere to do so. Tim’s experiences echo my thoughts and points to a plan of action, so that’s positive! Sharing helps.

By: Ian Anstice

Ian Anstice — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 20:59:31 +0000

Hi Puzzled. I checked with Tim on his figures. This is his reply

“He’s right to say the book fund has stayed about the same and the issues have gone down. I think he’s wrong to conclude that they should reduce the book fund – the answer is the opposite.

The reality is that for so long the book fund has been too low to sustain the quality of the stock – more good books disappear than appear. So long as the quality goes down – or doesn’t improve – then the number of people finding it attractive will decline. I did a calculation in Westminster about 10 years ago in which we added the stock losses through weeding, non returns and general disappearance and found that simply to maintain the number of books the book fund needed to be 50% greater than it was ( it was very small) . We did that for two years and worked on quality and the issues went up nicely “

By: Puzzled

Puzzled — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 23:35:41 +0000

I’d be interested to know if there is a breakdown of analysis comparing those authorities who have not cut budgets to those who have to see if this is the simple truth. Kent has not decreased its book fund but is still seeing a decline in issues and visitors despite a wide variety of efforts to reverse the trend. It does produce a catch 22 in the opposite direction – why continue to spend at the same level if the stock isn’t issuing?