I reported in January about a Toronto Public Library program which was attracting some controversy—they were trying to buy used best-seller books off of patrons in an effort to affordably meet the demand for these popular titles.
The Toronto Star is among several media outlets reporting that this program is now being scrapped—but not from the controversy alone, apparently. Rather, it is in part because patrons did not have enough books to sell them. From the article:
Bowles said the program’s inefficiency, and not the ire of writers, was the deciding factor in shuttering the pilot project. Members of the public sold the library just 127 books, comprising 57 titles, in the initiative’s first three months. “There wasn’t enough volume,” said Bowles. “It had no impact on our hold queue.”
The interest from the writing and publishing community—Margaret Atwood was amongst the authors who signed a letter of protest about this—“accelerated” the decision, the city’s chief librarian said. But it sounds like the bigger issue was that it simply did not produce a great enough volume of books to both run efficiently and to actually meet the goal of reducing the wait list time.
Whatever the reason, the program is ending and the writing community is chalking this up as a win. We’ll see what the Toronto Public Library does next!
Honestly, I think a better approach would be for the library to share a wish list of books it could use in its system. This way, it saves money, encourages wealthier patrons to contribute, and allows other patrons access to the books they want to read.
The sale of used books is nothing new, so I don’t see what all the hoopla is about.
It’s not a question of what “the Toronto Star [and] several media outlets” might be “reporting.” The reasons for cancelling this lemon of a program are stated clearly in the library’s report (PDF), which you could easily look up if you were passable competent. (Then again, you can’t typeset a quotation mark, either.)
The only saving grace here is that your previous coverage was an abomination, colossally stupid even by post-post-sale TeleRead standards.