Starter Villain is fabulous.
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It is a perfect piece. When I read it I always think of rural corollaries to what he identifies, since his seemed to have been an urban poverty experience. It’s…not exactly fun but weirdly fascinating to see the points of divergence and the ones of overlap. Like the one about a sidewalk with lots of brown glass took a bit of thought before I saw it.
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Yep. The e-book vendors decide that they will licence far fewer uses than a physical book will circulate in its lifetime. Which leads to a lower budget for physical books, because the e-books are more expensive. It’s a downward spiral.
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And a physical book can be borrowed for 3 weeks, and in most cases renewed without issue, whereas an e-book is borrowed for 1 week at a time, and because of all of the above, there are usually too many people waiting in line for the one or two ‘copies’ (many of which are probably ‘borrowing’ in order to finish it), so renewing almost never happens.
Now that I’m putting this together, they’re not allowing renewals because that wouldn’t count as a new ‘borrow’….correct?
So, even more enshittified than I thought.
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Our public library uses Hoopla for some of its digital circs. It’s billed per circ, so they have a global daily circulation limit for the entire system to keep the bill in check. If you try to check out something on Hoopla after about 8pm you’re out of luck since the limit inevitably gets hit; the app tells you to try again after midnight.
(also yes, systems like this generally count renewals as new circs for billing, if billed per circ.)
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Re renewals, that might depend on the library system and the contract they have with the vendor.
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I can confirm this, even if it’s not part of my department. The short version is, of course, none of the contracts are really good for any of the libraries. (Consortiums - like we joined in late 2024 - can do a little better since that makes us a larger effective customer, but still heavily weighted towards e-books being priced way more than physical books.)
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Should post those links in the tool/sites resource thread
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Just gonna leave this here too.
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Destroying the planet to “own the libs.”
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Well, that and propping up a dying industry.
“Owning the libs” is pushed as propaganda to help that goal, as we know.
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i can’t bear to watch
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Truly ursinine behavior.
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I bet the scene was grizzly
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