US DVD rental firm Netflix is to release a set-top box which will let subscribers download movies and other programmes over the net.
Libraryman considers the implications for public libraries:
True, “Netflix has spent about $40m on the development of its streaming service during the past year.” and that of course surely does not include licensing and revenue related math for the studios, etc. True also that money talks, eh? Still, given the mission of the library (particularly Public Libraries) it seems worth noting that:
As an industry, within the larger library-centric institutions that could make important impacts:
-We are not researching this kind of content delivery in any truly significant way.
-We are not planning to, in the future, provide specific deliverables based around his kind of content delivery.
-We do not have organized, direct or significant relationships with the companies that own the largest collections of popular content and manage it’s distribution to approach them as a potential distribution channel.
-We do not have the legal and negotiation teams that would be required to get our patrons access to the content controlled by companies mentioned above.
Some of people in his comments have suggested OverDrive and similar services as the future of providing content for public libraries. I'm not entirely sure these services have a broad enough selection yet. But maybe we've set ourselves up to fail by placing such pre-eminence on circulation and database usage statistics as performance indicators. Right now at my workplace, there are dozens of students studying for their exams who are not checking out books or using our computers for anything. Are we not providing them a valueable, if perhaps unquantifiable, service?
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