Comments on: Highlighting the Value of Library Use

By: Pauline

Pauline — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:44:25 +0000

Why buy books that will only end up forgotten on a shelf when you can access loads of books, reading material and countless other resources for free. Also using librarys provides jobs for people. Come on folks – do your society a favour – read more – use community computers and resources more – use it or loose it.

By: New Highlighting the Value of Library Use – Stephen's Lighthouse

New Highlighting the Value of Library Use – Stephen's Lighthouse — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:50:59 +0000

[...] Highlighting the Value of Library Use [...]

By: Kristen

Kristen — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:02:00 +0000

A friend of mine spends thousands of dollars each year on books, with the end result that most of her books are in storage, and she is quite poor. I’ve been trying to get her to embrace her local library, and I really think that if her library put your system into practice, she’d realise just how “priceless” this service is.
On the other hand, she is probably all that’s keeping the remaining Australian bookshops in business!
When I get a job after my library course, I will definitely recommend this.

By: Scott Hackstadt

Scott Hackstadt — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:27:33 +0000

Thank you for the clarification. Good work on this by the way.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:29:04 +0000

@Scott: sorry about that – it’s not clear on the receipt, but these are four audiobooks, not printed books. It always shocks me how expensive audiobooks are. I liked the idea of comparing them to Amazon though, but Amazon didn’t list a “new” price for a couple of them.

Although, the price listed isn’t necessarily accurate, anyway. Libraries often get big discounts on books, but the price included in the record is the retail price. And if we buy a multi-volume set, we usually put the full set price in for each individual record – because if any part is lost, we’d need to replace it by purchasing another complete set. And I think that if a book is donated, and no record exists for it, it gets a price of $0.

Not perfect, but hopefully it gets them thinking.

By: Scott Hackstadt

Scott Hackstadt — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:20:41 +0000

Out of curiosity, I went to Amazon and priced the new hardback prices of all four items and came up with $64.14 ($34.66 for the paperback totals) with free shipping and no sales tax. If this is to be done on receipts, it is probably best to not use the costs associated with the library’s acquisition.

Conceivably, someone without knowledge of library acquisitions could use this information to imply that the library is mismanaging funds, much like the $800 hammer DoD stories of the 1980′s.

I do think the concept is important to stress the library’s relevancy to the community. I just wonder if it might be better to show a more realistic cost to the public based on what they would pay.

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:15:31 +0000

@The Mom: thank you very much – I’m always happy to know I’m helping, and that someone finds this useful.

By: The Mom

The Mom — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:19:24 +0000

The books are priceless, the library is priceless and YOUR WORK (and explanations) are priceless I am sending this to all my techy librarian friends!

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:48:31 +0000

@Jason: like anything, it’s been both good and bad. Good in that we get all the latest features (which there are still plenty of, since Evergreen is still growing), but bad in that I don’t know how much testing each update gets. We get updates once or twice a month, and I think there has been maybe one time we didn’t have problems the next day (or for multiple days afterward, or sometimes have to roll back or patch the update). I’ve heard talk that we’ll shortly be moving to the regular versions rather than just the trunk code – which is nice, because running the trunk means we can’t customize anything for our consortium either.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:49:07 +0000

Ah, I forgot your library is in MVLC. I’ve heard about how it constantly keeps up with the master branch and was curious how that works out for the member libraries. How is it in practice? Constant fires or not too out of the ordinary?