The Challenges of Digital Resources
Across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, public libraries serve as far more than traditional book repositories. They are community centers, job search hubs, and digital lifelines providing vital services to residents every day. Yet, as patron demand shifts increasingly toward e-books, digital audiobooks, and other online databases, public libraries face a compounding financial crisis: the exorbitant cost of digital material licensing combined with stagnant state funding.
Nowhere is this squeeze felt more acutely than on the digital shelf. Unlike print books, which libraries purchase once and own permanently, digital materials operate under temporary publisher licenses. Publishers frequently cap licenses by time (e.g., expiring after two years) or by number of borrows (e.g., expiring after 26 checkouts). When a digital license expires, the library must either repurchase the title or forfeit access entirely.
On top of the licensing complications, digital materials are often far more expensive for libraries than they are for the general public. A typical bestseller in e-book formats can cost libraries more than $60 and sometimes up to well over $100 per copy, only to have that copy “expire” and need to be repurchased.
As the digital services and applications patrons rely on become more expensive each year, our libraries are having to make difficult decisions on how best to use the funding they receive. Librarians have long excelled at “doing more with less,” but when e-book licenses expire faster than revenues grow, waiting lists lengthen and digital offerings shrink.
The dedicated employees across our public libraries work tirelessly to deliver high-quality educational and recreational resources to every member of the community. If we are to continue to provide materials that our patrons want, we need to find ways to fund libraries appropriately and to get publishers to understand the value of libraries not only to our communities, but to the publishers as well. People discover new authors or subjects at the library and then go on to purchase those books later on. Libraries are not hurting sales, we are building readers.
Libraries face a variety of stumbling blocks to providing the needed and necessary materials that our communities are seeking but are doing everything they can to balance often stagnant funding with the requirements and high costs put in front of us by publishers. Allegheny County libraries want to support and uplift the communities they serve. The employees at our libraries all work tirelessly to make sure that they are serving the needs of everyone in the community, in the best way possible.
As we reach the end of Love Your Library Month, consider making a donation to your local public library. Your donations go toward funding a wide variety of materials and services that benefit your community, including digital materials. And if a monetary donation is out of reach right now, consider contacting your state and local legislators to let them know how valuable your library is to your community is an excellent way to provide your support!
