the logistical process through which holds are fulfilled. The relative ease — at least for tech-savvy patrons — of requesting a book through the library’s website isn’t the only way in which Multnomah County is adapting to technological changes. The common areas in Central Library are now dotted with large portable charging stations at which patrons can charge their devices, a change that required some minor electrical work, Jarman says. Another major change — one that was already in progress but that accelerated after the COVID-19 pandemic hit — is the rise of e-books. According to Cunningham, the number of digital checkouts in fiscal year 2023 was 5.8 million, up from 3.5 million in 2019. “It’s not that people aren’t still reading print books — a lot of people still do — but that balance has shifted quite a bit in terms of people’s preferences,” says library director Vailey Oehlke. That’s not a bad thing in any librarian’s eyes — having more ways to access books is always a net positive — but the ascendance of e-books has also posed some notable challenges for library budgets. When a person or institution buys a physical book, “it’s my copy of the book,” Wendy Cornelisen, state librarian for the state of Oregon, tells Oregon Business. “Copyright gives me the power as the owner now of this book to do whatever I want with it. When I’m done with it, I can resell it, I can give it to the library, I can pass it off to friends to read and hope they bring it back. But this is my property. This is my book.” With e-books the terms are different. “For the most part, when libraries are contracting with — usually not directly with a publisher — but with a third-party aggregator, they are licensing content, so there are license terms for that e-book. It’s essentially renting the title for a specific period of time. One of the things that we’ve seen recently in that e-book marketplace is that publishers are putting forth terms through the aggregators that limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out. There are some terms that are like, ‘Hey, library, you can have that book checked out 26 times,’ which kind of feels a little arbitrary.” Digital licenses cost more than the purchase of a physical book — and they also cost more than it would cost a consumer to purchase an e-book. In 2019 the American Library Association used the example of the 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See. At that time, an individual consumer would pay $12.99 for a digital version of the book; a library would pay about $52 to license it for two years. “They say things like, ‘Oh, well, our research has shown that the average print material only circulates 13 times before it falls apart.’ Well, OK, where’d you get that information from? How do you know? Like, did you talk to us?” says Buzzy Nielsen, the program manager for State Library Services for the State Library of Oregon. When e-books were new, a purchase was much more like a traditional book purchase, and libraries could keep electronic copies forever. But the shifting terms have driven library costs way up. Nielsen served as library director of the Crook County Library from 2016 to 2020, and he estimates that in his time there, the amount of money the library spent on digital acquisitions more than doubled, from about $15,000 a year to about $35,000 a year. In Multnomah County, the digital acquisitions budget for 2023 — $1.5 million — is up only slightly from 2019, when it was $1.2 million. Legislatures in some states have sought more reasonable terms for e-book access, and there have been conversations at the federal level as well. Oehlke and Cornelisen say they’re hoping to see some change, either at the federal or state level. Top: View of the north side of Central Library’s second floor in 2024. Middle:Tthe same view in 2019. Above: Many users access online materials through Libby, an app available for phones and tablets. 24
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