Why are there limits on reading ebooks?

Millions of books, many valuable to genealogists, are being digitized around the world. The basic question is why are so many of these books, even those clearly out of copyright protection, subjected to various types of restrictions and outright denial of service? In this post, I am using an example from Brigham Young University. This is only one example. I could make a similar issue of almost every private and public library in America. The libraries' attitude towards ebooks is ambivalent to say the least. This is especially true for books that have little or no commercial value but are still under copyright and therefore subject to special, very inconsistent, restrictions.

I have referred recently to my primary example. As a volunteer at the Brigham Young University Family History Library, I can check out most, if not all the circulating books, of the millions of available paper books in the main, Harold B. Lee Library and read them at my leisure (assuming I had any) in my home. But access to the ebooks is limited to students and faculty. This would make sense more than a hundred years ago when almost all libraries were limited to those who paid for access, but the U.S. has had free public libraries since the time of Andrew Carnegie. It is also true that some other big archive/libraries have closed stacks and access is limited to those who qualify for doing research. Again, this made some sort of sense in that the closed stacks protected the collection from theft. But the BYU Library example seems counter-intuitive. It would seem more logical to make the paper books restricted to the library and allow more access to the ebook collection where there is no danger of loss, damage or theft and where the costs of circulating the books are minimal.

Once a book is digitized and online, there is really almost no cost associated with the process of checking out or checking in the book. In addition, the overhead cost per book to maintain large collections is extremely small. If access control is some kind of issue, how about charging a fee for access. But this does not seem to matter, the BYU Library has a Friends of the Library arrangement but even if you donate $1000 a year that does not give you access to the millions of ebooks online and available to the students.

It is possibly an extension of maintaining libraries, especially university libraries as cloistered environs for the academically select few, but that is another subject for another day.

If this is a money issue, then it would seem to be resolvable. If it is a licensing or copyright issue, then why do the students and faculty have access. Normally, a digital library is required to have a copy of the paper book for each digital copy made available. Commercial services such as Overdrive.com exist to provide libraries with digital book collections that can be "checked out" from a local library. Utah has such as system through Overdrive.com called Digital Utah, Utah's Online Library also known as the Pioneer Digital Library.  The Utah Overdrive collection is pitifully small, the largest non-fiction categories have what you would expect in a small high school library. In comparison, the Phoenix Digital Library maintains collections over four times as large in the same categories. This is not necessarily a function of the size of the population. The Digital Utah Overdrive or Pioneer Library is comprised of almost every library of any size in the entire state.

Surprisingly, one of the major free components of the Digital Utah digital library is a huge collection of material from Brigham Young University. In addition, the Library has partnerships with three major, free, online digital libraries: the Internet Archive, the Mountain West Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America.

For genealogical research, size is important. Genealogically related books are not usually in demand by library patrons and maintaining a sizable collection can be expensive and have little or no general public appeal. So where do we go? Well, the Internet Archive (Archive.org) has a huge collection. FamilySearch.org also has a huge online collection of genealogy books, but a significant part of the collection can only be accessed from inside the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or in a Family History Center. Lately, the largest collection of books and periodicals specifically for genealogists has been put online by MyHeritage.com. Of course, MyHeritage.com is a subscription service and therefore has an incentive to maintain large, searchable genealogical collections. But the presently MyHeritage.com has close to half a million fully searchable genealogy books online.

The real bottom line problem here is the future of libraries. Why do I need I library if I can get any book I want for a nominal fee from Amazon.com or MyHeritage.com or for free from Archive.org or Google or FamilySearch of any of hundreds of other online ebook websites?

As a self-fulfilling result of the restrictive attitude of libraries, library usage across the United States is in a slow but constant decline. See Pew Research Center, Libraries and Learning. Many libraries, like those in Utah, do not put much emphasis, if any, on their digital book collections. Additionally, offering ebook collections does not seem to enhance in library visits. In fact, it is likely that those who use ebooks the most, are probably even less likely to visit a library in person. The role of libraries in the face of the technological changes is unclear.

From any standpoint however, limiting access to ebooks in not in the interests to researchers, including genealogists, or any other serious readers. If the libraries do not supply the ebooks then the online, commercial entities, such as Amazon.com will certainly compete and the libraries will be the losers. As I have written recently, why would I donate to a university library who did not provide me ebook access when for far less than my contribution, I could purchase a full, unlimited subscription to Kindle Unlimited Books with millions of volumes available?

I am in the business of information and I have been most of my life. I shop information the same way some people shop the prices of physical objects online. If I find information cheaper from non-library sources then libraries lose the "sale." If they lose too many sales, they go out of business. End of story.

More later.