Tonight (2019-11-04) was a Mendon Public Library Board of Trustee meeting.
Next Monday looks to be busy. As it’s 11/11, that means Veteran’s Day. While some places use that as an excuse to close, the library will be having a book sale instead. Something to do before/after the Veteran’s event at 11AM.
I had difficulty hearing parts of the meeting, as there was a fair sized amount of activity in the library. A good thing in general, but it does make this location different from the other meetings I observe.
Accordingly, I’m not sure how many books were approved for scrap. I thought I heard 2500, but that seems too many. Mind you, there are a lot books in the library. According to last years Annual Report, they gained about that many. Which would make this a more or less annual pruning of the collection. As water damage was mentioned, I can just image the condition some of those books are in. Still, throwing out books does not sit well with me, even if I can accept the practical necessity.
Challenges around ebooks were discussed. It sounds like the pricing model is making it difficult. And unlike physical books, people can’t give their ebooks to the library after they finish reading them (as they don’t own the book, but have a license). While I can understand the publishers desire to make money, how that interacts with libraries and their already unique place in copyright is interesting. While I’m not a lawyer, at first glance a library is a giant copyright violation. After all, their ‘business’ is sharing copyrighted works (books, movies, etc). I’m pretty firmly on the ‘information wants to be free’ side, but there are others (see Mickey) who are just as firmly on the opposite side. As said above, it will be interesting to see how this plays out, long term.
As the library will be getting new shelving, they will be closed for parts of December. Considering past projects, I would expect them to minimize actual closed hours. Exact days weren’t mentioned, but it sounded like the middle of the month.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the November 4, 2019 meeting of the Mendon Public Library Board of Trustees.