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An Analogy for Library Content

Have you ever wondered what librarians are dealing with when we are purchasing and managing content for you? 

Let me compare it to something that may be familiar to you.

I own a smart television. (Because I am philosophically opposed to high cable bills but that's another matter.) When I set up my television, I have to decide what apps to install to view shows. Some apps are free. PlutoTV provides free channels. Amazon Freevee provides free channels. There is some overlap in channels between PlutoTV and Freevee, but I am not sure that the same channels are offering the same show/film at the same time from one service to the other. In addition, I have an Amazon FireStick for a non-smart television. The FireStick also offers channels and shows, but PlutoTV through the FireStick seems to include different channels than PlutoTV on my smart television. PlutoTV and Freevee show scheduled shows not watch on demand...I think. 

In addition, other subscription apps are available through FireStick and the smart  television. Some offer the ability to watch films and shows on demand when I want them. So I must make decisions whether I wish to pay for these subscription apps. Do they offer some value that PlutoTV and Freevee do not? Do they offer shows and films that I wish to watch? How much am I willing to pay for the convenience of  watching something when I want to watch it? I regard my television entertainment as a luxury beyond my costs for essentials of food, housing, clothing, etc. So I am only willing to invest so much in a luxury.

Do I want to pay for Acorn TV or does it have the same shows as PlutoTV and Freevee? Do I want to pay for Amazon Prime to watch movies? Or Hulu? Or Netflix? How much does the content overlap? Do they have the same movies and shows? Will I be paying for mostly the same content twice? Or three times?

PlutoTV has a Doctor Who channel, which is fun. But it is mostly the older "classic" Doctor Who. It includes Tom Baker, which is good. But perhaps some of the other actors do not interest me. It comes with the smart TV and the FireStick, but are they throwing in something for "free" that I really don't want? If Tom Baker was only 3% of the channel content, would the Doctor Who channel really be of interest to me?

Plus, PlutoTV changes its channels on occasion to add or subtract channels. After all, the apps (free or subscription) probably must pay whom ever owns the shows in order to display them and those contracts expire and may fail their renegotiation. 

And both PlutoTV and Freevee have many, many channels that I never watch because I am just not interested.

Or maybe I can find a specific show or film free online if I know where to look.

SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES AND JOURNALS AND E-BOOK COLLECTIONS

Librarians must make similar decisions when we are evaluating content for our databases, journal subscriptions, and e-book collections. Some databases come with some "free" full-text titles thrown in ("Free" with the database payment). We pay for packages of journals and/or e-books that may contain some content that is not really of interest to our us or our patrons. We must determine whether there is enough desirable content to make the acquisition attractive. In addition, different databases and collections may include some of the same titles. So again, we must determine whether paying for too much of the same content. If new titles are provided, then are they desirable enough? Some titles are almost always present (like NBC and CBS on the television) so we take them for granted.

And some journal titles are desirable but they may not include some of the years of coverage that we want. This is why the library sometimes subscribes to a journal even though we are getting some years of issues for free--because our free stuff doesn't include the newest most desirable articles. Like the Doctor Who channel, we may be given the older less popular Doctors rather than the newer Doctors' seasons.

It is tricky. Librarians have some software that we use to try to help us compare content and we get some statistics to figure out what our patrons are searching and viewing. But there can be some noise in the statistics. People search for topics for a variety of reasons that may or may not affect what they want to be always available. And the databases and journal/e-book collections change content if a publisher pulls its journal title or tries to sell them a new journal.

So I hope this analogy might help you understand what we librarians deal with when we are trying to manage your databases, journals, books, e-books, and other information resources.