Never Mind Legal Issues; Kindle not good choice for most libraries

(edited 1/30: Changed post title with qualifier "most libraries.")

(Screeching brakes)  Whoa. Wait a minute.  Stepping back from my Kindle krush and putting aside the question of whether or not it's legal for libraries to loan them, I considered the Kindle issue through the eyes of a public library manager who has to make decisions about how to get the most out of a budget. Duh!  It's a no brainer. There is no way  I could justify deploying Kindles, given the present model. The machine itself is 400 bucks and can hold up to 200 titles. Let's say that the average price of a Kindle title is 10 bucks. That all adds up to almost $2500 tied up in a resource that can only be used by one person at a time.  For that much money, I could buy more than 100 titles for check-out, a few reference sets, a year's access to a database, a bunch of cds, audio books, or DVDs,  a couple of display units, some comfy furniture, conference registration plus travel and lodging for a couple staff members, a contract with a coffee vendor, honorarium for program speakers.... 

How does it make any sort of sense for a library to loan out a $2500 resource to be used by one person at a time for 2-4 weeks? That's the equivalent of allowing only one person at a time access to Ancestry online for two weeks.  Or to check out the entire World Book set. Those ideas sound outrageous. Because they are.  It would demonstrate impeachment-level poor stewardship. Even if the price were to come down drastically, it would still be an irresponsible allocation. Now, if Amazon or someone could come up with an affordable e-reader with the same functionality as Kindle, that patrons would want to buy, along with becoming a vendor of affordable, multi-format ebooks that libraries could offer to patrons for EASY downloading, that'd be something to text home about. 

If there are practical reasons why loaning Kindles is a good thing for libraries to do (outside of trying to prove our out-of-the-boxiness), please educate me.

Comments

[Jason]

To spend that much on something, too, that has yet to prove itself as a durable public resource (even thinking about developing policies for the replacement/destruction of such devices gives me a headache...) really makes no practical sense. Add in the possible other unforseable costs (IT support and parts replacement, basic mainenance and staff training and patron training time, etc) to an institution and the whole Kindle phenom looks silly.

[Susie Lorand]

Maybe it will become practical for some libraries *if* a lot of open access or public domain books become available in Kindle's format.

[Hip]

Hi!

If you're interested, we blogged about this a couple of weeks ago. One of the libraries that are loaning the Kindle left a comment explaining some of the financial benefits.

http://closedstacks.wordpress.com/2007/12/28/whats-a-kindle/

http://closedstacks.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/and-the-kindle-debate-continues/

[Steve Lawson]

Yeah, outside of a thought experiment, this makes no sense to me. I'd also hate to see the library implicitly approving of the DRM-encrusted files.