Why Copyright Holders Need Libraries

One thing I didn't get around to noting about the whole Windows Media Player tracking which DVDs you watch thing is how libraries upset the apple cart in the world of publishers and their advertisers (in lots of different ways, but I'm focusing on just one area at the moment). This isn't a new phenomenon - witness the Oprah Book Club. Yeah, hundreds of thousands of people buy her latest pick, but some part of the surge in these sales is from libraries that buy at least two copies of the title. In some cases, lots more than two copies (think Chicago Public Library here). You don't ever hear that mentioned when the publisher quotes sales figures. And for each of those library circulations, those extra readers don't get counted so the statistics don't match up.

This whole process gets even trickier with digital files and the Web. For example, a lot of libraries download the Real player on their public workstations, and that gets logged as a "user." In reality, that may be a hundred users, and it really throws off the demographic data the software is collecting because those hundred users are listening to a hundred different genres, radio stations, Webcasts, etc. Of course, some of us consider this to be a good thing.
;-)

So if Big Brother Bill is tracking what movies you're watching, and you're checking out DVDs from the library, it may not be the most accurate barometer of your tastes. Same thing with music. And if library sales are just lumped in with overall sales, it's harder to target the advertiser's messages. Certainly the sales figures are off for the movie in question, since all those additional users watching the movie are being ignored because Bill is tracking the wrong demographic data. In the past, CD sales have been counted in bulk only, including whatever libraries buy. Imagine how far off these numbers will be when a user can "check out" an MP3 from your online catalog!

Did you know that there are more libraries in the U.S. than there are McDonalds? Think about that for a minute. Every person using those libraries is being utterly ignored by the BigCos because they're not viewed as a "market," even though libraries act as surrogate purchasers for their residents. And oh by the way, we're expert surrogate purchasers. We're the savviest consumers you'll ever meet.

Rambling/Thinking Out Loud

As we approach the end of the "mass market" for music, news, movies, and television, libraries might be one of the few places left that have "mass market" demographics, even though the output is currently considered only one user. Maybe that needs to change. While librarians would never-ever-not-in-a-million-years-don't-even-ask-talk-to-the-hand give out any kind of data about their patrons, maybe it would be interesting to note that Oprah's current pick circulated 50 times this month. Not to whom and not when, but just the circ counts for big titles of our choosing. In fact, what kind of a number do you think it would be if we counted a month's worth of circs across the country the next time Oprah picks a book?

This suggestion is probably heresy to some, but it is one way to prove to publishers and copyright holders that they need us in their loop, that they need to work with us and not against us. It would show libraries and our patrons as the viable market we've always been. After all, there are a heck of a lot of books that pretty much only libraries buy.

In fact, it's one way to make our patrons' voices heard. They don't purchase a specific title with their paycheck per se, although they do based on their tax bills. Maybe publishers need to know that 50 extra people read that book this month, even though they didn't buy it. Right now, publishers see that as a threat to their livelihood, even more so with digital files, but what if we can make them understand that those people probably wouldn't have read the book at all if it wasn't for the library and its two copies. After all, those 50 people are already being ignored anyway.

© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine. Last update: 5/20/2004; 4:25:13 PM.

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