Behind the Scenes at the Library

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at a public library? 

On this episode, the first of an occasional series, we'll take a peek at some things that the technical services department does, including everything that needs to happen to get books and other items on our shelves.

We also talk to reference librarian David Scanlon about digital preservation, an important topic in our field that has assumed enormous relevance now that so much of our lives are online.

Transcript

Michael Pierry
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Hamden Library Podcast. I am your host, Michael Pierry, and this month we are taking a look behind the scenes here at the library. I talked to Carrie Kerzner of our Technical Services Department about what is involved in getting books and other items catalogued and on our shelves. I also interviewed reference librarian David Scanlon about digital preservation, something I think everyone should be at least a little bit invested in. Last but certainly not least, I spoke with Jessica Dans, the Technical Services Department head about our digital branch. This was a really fun episode for me to put together. I really enjoyed interviewing my co workers and I hope to do more of that in the future. But before we listen to those interviews, Mike Wheatley is excited to tell us about some of his favorite films available on Kanopy. Take it away, Mike.

Mike Wheatley
My name is Michael Wheatley. And in addition to having worked at the Hamden Public Library for 17 years, I've been affiliated with Best Video Film and Cultural Center here in Hamden since 1985. This month's Movie Talk includes some films currently showing on our library's free streaming service Kanopy and a couple of recommendations for St. Paddy's Day. If you're a Hamden library card holder, go to HamdenLibrary.org and click on "Download and Stream" to find Kanopy. You can access it from many devices, including smart TVs, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon and Apple devices. And more help is always available by calling Information Services at the library. If you aren't a Hamden patron, check with your local library.

These are some examples of some of my favorite films on Kanopy right now. These films were chosen in no particular order. "Modern Times" from 1936: this silent, comedic masterpiece finds the iconic little tramp, Charlie Chaplin employed at a state of the art factory, where the inescapable machinery completely overwhelms him and where various mishaps keep getting him sent to prison in between his various jails since he meets and befriends and orphan girl, Paulette Goddard. Both together and apart, they try to contend with the difficulties of modern life with the tramp working as a waiter and eventually a performer. This is a great family film, one of the last of the "Little Tramp" movies that Charlie Chaplin made.

"Road to Perdition" is a 2002 American crime drama film directed by Sam Mendes. The screenplay was adapted from the graphic novel of the same name. The film stars Tom Hanks, Paul Newman in his final live action theatrical film acting role, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig.  A plot takes place in 1931 during the Great Depression, following a mob enforcer and his son as they seek vengeance against a mobster who were murdered the rest of their family. I especially love the cinematography by Conrad Hall, who's nicknamed The Prince of Darkness for his wonderful use of shadows and colors. 

Another great classic thriller, "Manchurian Candidate", from 1973. Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of US soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon has returned home and Sergeant Raymond Shaw -- Laurence Harvey -- is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco -- played by Frank Sinatra in a great dramatic role -- finds himself plagued by strange nightmares, and together with fellow soldier Alan Melvin -- played by James Edwards -- then Kate's racist to uncover a terrible plot. Angela Lansbury received an Academy Award nomination for the conniving mother of Laurence Harvey. The directed by John Frankenheimer.

There are three other great Frankenheimer films on Kanopy: "The Iceman Cometh" from 1973, written by Eugene O'Neill, starring Frederick March; the mysterious thriller "Seconds" with Rock Hudson; and the great action film "Ronin" with Robert De Niro, John Reno and Stellan Skarsgaard. Check out my November 2022 discussion of "The Intouchables", the French original version of the American film "Upside" with Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston. On our library podcast, if you haven't heard it yet. "The Intouchables" is also available to watch on Kanopy.

Is a great 2017 independent film called "Columbus" when a renowned architecture student falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana, a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many significant modernistic buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey, a young architecture enthusiast who works at the local library. as their intimacy develops, Jin and Casey explore both the town and their own conflicted emotions. Do yourself a favor; check Kanopy out.

Mike Wheatley
As promised, I have two suggestions for a fun St. Patrick's Day watch. If you do a library search for Tyrone Power matinee idol collection, you will find "Luck of the Irish" from 1948. This is also rentable from Best Video Film and Cultural Center here in town. This film was one of my favorites annual Irish film traditions starring the great actor Tyrone Power and the beautiful Ann Baxter with Cecil Kelleway as a fairly oversized leprechaun that American businessman Power accidentally discovers in an Irish countryside. It's a great story, I promise you.

The other is a pre-James Bond Sean Connery special Disney film called "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" from 1959. An old storyteller played by Albert Sharp falls into a well and meets a group of leprechauns. The leprechauns give him three wishes to get his life together. It's wonderful family film. Thank you.

Michael Pierry
I have the pleasure today of speaking to one of my coworkers here at the Hamden Public Library, Carrie Kerzner. Hi, Carrie.

Carrie Kerzner
Hi, Mike.

Michael Pierry
Thanks for agreeing to speak with us. You work in technical services as a cataloging librarian. So what does the Technical Services Department do?

Carrie Kerzner
Thanks for including Tech Services in this month's podcast, first of all.

Michael Pierry
Sure.

Carrie Kerzner
So the Tech Services department, or Tech Services for short, is a mystery to many patrons. We're not a public facing department in the library. We have three full time librarians, a full time library technical assistant, and two part time paraprofessional staff. We're mostly a behind the scenes operation. Even though Tech Services staff -- we all help cover other departments in the library -- but in a nutshell, Tech Services make sure that materials get ordered from our book and media wholesalers, items are received in invoiced -- which can take several weeks because there's still supply chain and shipping issues -- items are cataloged with bibliographic records that contain information about the item, such as the author, title, summary, subject headings, and yes, Dewey Decimal call number. Lastly, an item gets processed with property stamps, barcodes and any special or additional reinforcing it might need before it goes down to Borrower Services. And we also repair and mend books as needed, especially if a book is, like, out of print and not available elsewhere, and we want to keep it in the collection.

So it's kind of a long description, but um, we don't -- Tech Services, we also are responsible for ordering and maintaining certain areas of the collection, and we read review journals like "Publishers Weekly", keep up with the "New York Times" bestseller list ordering patron requests, and we keep the collection relevant to the needs of the community. And lastly, our department head of Tech Services, Jessica Dans, has a lot of additional responsibilities. That includes managing the department, maintaining our wonderful library website, dealing with vendors, working with our business manager and the town's IT department, making sure our research databases and streaming services are working, and a whole lot of other problem solving behind the scenes. Her list is endless, really.

Michael Pierry
Wow. So that's it, huh?

Carrie Kerzner
[Laughter] That's it in a nutshell.

Michael Pierry
Just a couple of things.

Carrie Kerzner
Just a few things.

Michael Pierry
Just everything. [Laugher]

Carrie Kerzner
Yeah. That's the mystery of Tech Services.

Michael Pierry
Yeah. And it's wonderful to be in that department. So let's circle back. You're a cataloger, so tell me more about what cataloging is and why it's so important for both libraries and patrons.

Carrie Kerzner
Well, I just -- I have to say I think I was a born cataloger because when I was little at, like, the Scholastic book fairs, I would spend all of my allowance. I would come home, and I would write on index cards author and title and like do, like, pretend due dates for my stuffed animals, so I was like a born cataloger, I think.

Michael Pierry
[Laughter] That's so great. Born librarian, too.

Carrie Kerzner
Yes. So, um, so I've been cataloging for over 25 years, and I've been here at Hamden Public Library for 17 years in Tech Services, but I like to think of cataloging as the backbone of the library. I'm sure other departments could say the same thing about their own department. But, so we're -- Hamden Library is part of the LION Library Consortium that has over 35 libraries in a resource sharing database. We're either using bibliographic records, you know, in the shared online catalog, and we can get bibliographic records from vendors; from Library of Congress; WorldCat, which is the world's largest global library catalog. And, so yeah, we usually pull in records.

Pulling in records or records already being there is what we call "copy cataloging". So if there's not a record in there, we have to do what's called "original cataloging" for it, which basically means the cataloger has to enter all of the information about the item: author; title; subject headings; physical information, like number of pages, if a book has pictures, the size of the book; and publishing and copyright info. So it's a very detailed task, especially because we're sharing the record with other libraries, and you want to make sure that other people can find it in the catalog. LION does have a head cataloger -- and they're located in Middletown -- that oversees bib records. It's a big task trying to maintain a huge database, and so we all do the best that we can to make sure bib records have the correct information in order to be searched and found by patrons and staff alike.

Michael Pierry
Yeah, it's really important because you have to be searchable and you have to be easily findable.

Carrie Kerzner
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Pierry
So can you give us a brief overview of how a book or another item gets on the shelf?

Carrie Kerzner
Sure. Physical items that get processed include books, reference materials, DVDs, talking books, Playaways. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but for the most part, those are the items that need physical processing. To recap what I mentioned previously, materials get ordered from our book, media vendors, and we have a few; items are received and invoiced; items are cataloged with the bibliographic record and a Dewey Decimal call number in order to be shelved in the collection. Items are processed with barcodes, property stamps, date due slips, and a special red label if it's a newly published book. Items are then kind of double checked. You know, is the record in there? Is everything stamped right? And then finally, items are brought down to Borrower Services where they're shelved accordingly or to fill a patrons hold request.

Michael Pierry
Wow, that's great.

Carrie Kerzner
Again, in a nutshell. [Laughs]

Michael Pierry
That's the whole cycle.

Carrie Kerzner
Yeah.

Michael Pierry
So is there anything about your job or about the Tech Services department that you think people would find surprising or interesting or unusual?

Carrie Kerzner
This was, this was kind of a hard question here, to come up with something because there's a few things but I did think that discussing maybe the Dewey Decimal System. So, most public libraries still use the Dewey Decimal System, in which a call number is assigned according to its subject. So the problem is most books cover multiple topics, and could possibly be shelved in more than, you know, one area of the library. In that case, it's up to the cataloger to make the best decision where the item might best fit in the collection.

See how an item circulates and you know, sometimes down the road, we will change a call number if we think it should be shelved elsewhere. Some libraries choose to do away with Dewey Decimal. And they use more browsing topics, like bookstores use. Academic libraries use Library of Congress numbers, which look very different from Dewey. So it'll be interesting to see what updates might be in store for Dewey Decimal, if another classification system will be developed, you know, or that's -- it is a kind of a topic we discuss in library land: what to do with Dewey?

Michael Pierry
Yes, because he's kind of a product of the 19th century, literally.

Carrie Kerzner
Yeah. But for now we're sticking with it. And also in Tech Services, I just want to say, you know, what you might not know is that we all wear many hats. We help cover public service desks when other staff are out or in meetings, we plan programs, we assist the podcast team, wink wink.

Carrie Kerzner
We help promote the Library and Community information on our, you know, we do blog posts, you cover social media. We help plan staff training, we run lots of stats and reports. So Tech Services, you know, we do wear a lot of hats. We are not always behind the scenes, like you think it might be. But at the end of the day -- this is the best part -- Tech Services staff are the lucky ones who gets to open and see the new books first. Haha, which is pretty neat.

Michael Pierry
Thank you.

Michael Pierry
Yes. Testify. I cosign on that. It's definitely filling up my Goodreads queue.

Carrie Kerzner
Yeah. I mean, it's like, I mean it's like, you know, Christmas morning, opening up the boxes and getting to see the new books and hold them and smell them first. And so that's, that's the fun part.

Michael Pierry
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, thank you, Carrie, so much for talking to us today.

Carrie Kerzner
My pleasure. I hope that demystifies, you know, kind of what Tech Services does. And yeah, it's really a fun department for us to work in behind the scenes.

Michael Pierry
Great. Thanks.

Carrie Kerzner
You're welcome.

Michael Pierry
David Scanlon is a reference librarian at Hamden Public Library. He's also a musician, and a former Digital Navigator. All of these roles past and present, position Dave well to speak on the topic of digital preservation, which he has kindly agreed to do with me. Dave, thanks for being here.

David Scanlon
Thanks for having me. I hope I'm qualified to talk about the topic. We'll have to see.

Michael Pierry
I don't know anyone more qualified. So you're it. So, when we talk about digital preservation, what are we talking about? Is it files such as photos, email documents that are born digital? Is it digitization of physical material? Is it both?

David Scanlon
Yeah, digital preservation is the act of actually preserving things digitally. As a result, this can -- we can be talking about, as you say, digitally born files, meaning like something that was created digitally. That could be an email, a photo that you took on your phone. Or preserved -- the act of preserving something that was physical, and then you digitized. So that could be a 35 millimeter photo print that you have, and then you have scanned it, and now you are left with this file. And we need to find a way to preserve that and make sure that it is safe for generations to come.

Michael Pierry
Yeah. There is kind of this assumption, sometimes I feel like that digitizing is about making things permanent, somehow. Like it's, you're gonna digitize this, it's like, you know, preserving it for the ages. But is that really -- Is that really the case? And if it's not, then why? Why are we digitizing things?

David Scanlon
Yeah, there is completely this assumption of like, let's digitize it, and it's good. However, the file itself is such a fragile -- such a fragile thing. And again, not being a computer scientist or electrical engineer, if we're thinking on the kind of bit level or the lowest level of these files -- the true ones and zeros -- it takes very little for a file to not be usable. And I guess when we're talking about the ones and zeros, we might be talking about, like, a file being corrupted, or there being something small goes wrong on that one zero level. And it doesn't take much for the computer, when it tries to read it, to say "actually don't know how to read this" and just give you an error message. Or there's some really great examples through the Library of Congress of what it looks like when there's kind of -- you know -- something like just a couple of bytes that are off, and what an image it might be openable, or they have found a way to open it, but it's quite drastic, what that looks like versus, you know, a picture is torn. You can kind of still see what it might be about. And it doesn't take much on the digital side.

David Scanlon
The other aspect would be a file type becoming obsolete. So the file might be fine. But I don't know if 40 years from now if a JPEG is still going to be used. And if it is, do we have... 40 years from now will there be a software that can open a JPEG? So this the other part of this equation is kind of the file type.

David Scanlon
The last thing is just whatever hardware this file is sitting on. Will we have the ability to retrieve it from that? I think the best example would be, say, things that you might have in your house on a floppy disk. The library has a floppy drive, amazingly -- floppy to USB -- but I certainly don't have a floppy drive. None of our computers do. So this idea that like, you know, are you able to connect with that information? The file might be okay, but the hardware has become obsolete. So why do we even bother doing it? There are kind of benefits to this, the biggest one is definitely spatial: these files take up much less space. And the other the other one that I think of is the shareability. The print of a 35 millimeter photo -- that keeps being the example that I'm using -- it is a physical item that is in one location. If you have a file, particularly if you are saving it somewhere on, like, a cloud-based storage system, you can kind of share access to that file with everyone in your community or in your family or everyone that you want to have access to that content fairly easily.

Michael Pierry
Yeah, so it's really more about access, ease of access, when it comes to digitization, at least of physical materials.

David Scanlon
Yeah, I mean, our digital lives absolutely have tremendous benefits. Absolutely. The ability to store a sheer quantity of things. I mean, it really kind of highlights both the role of kind of curation, and you know, the role of kind of cataloging and like searchability of kind of, "can you find it?" And all of this also, it makes me think a lot of a very difficult problem for digital preservation because when you're doing digital preservation, most of us are going to be doing it for ourselves. And at home in our free time, we're not going to have the capacity to really do digital preservation well, for like, kind of a mammoth amount of material, and I think this poses a problem with the ease in that we can create content, but are the difficulty with organizing that content. I can pretty quickly take 10,000 pictures, it would take me a really long time to organize those 10,000 pictures in a way that is kind of shareable unless you want everyone to use the same platform.

Michael Pierry
Yeah, absolutely. You sort of alluded to this earlier, but why is it a good idea to have at least three different copies of your important files in three different places?

David Scanlon
Yeah, that is kind of the gold standard that preservationists use for this topic is three copies. Often what I like to say is one of them being on a cloud based storage, some type of cloud based storage, could be Google Drive, it could be OneDrive, it could be any of these other things that we're talking about, there's a few kind of benefits to to suggesting that. One is just that file will most likely be the safest, I say that because most of the, say the the Googles of the world, have the ability to do kind of checks to run random checks on the security of the files. And this is something that large institutions also do of just kind of having the computer run through and check a sample size of the files on a server to make sure the file is stable. You know, I'm sure and it's I mean, I'm guessing, but I'm sure an institution like say like the Natural History Museum or something like that would also be doing that for its internal servers. But I'm not doing it for my you know, anything I have at home, I'm my own stuff, but certainly a cloud based storage system, like a Google Drive or a OneDrive, they're just generally doing these kinds of checks to make sure that the files are stable.

Also, with cloud based storage systems, they're the data centers are geographically scattered. So you have you're gonna have multiple copies within a cloud based storage system sitting in different places. If power goes down, and there is an issue at a data center in one place, there's most likely going to be a backup somewhere else. Lastly, with cloud based storage, that's the one where it's going to be easiest to share it with your community members. You usually can do it with a link, just kind of share admin passwords, or admin kind of credentials to the files. So that'd be one location.

The next would be some type of kind of external hard drive that you have at home, external hard drives come up, there's a lot of different types. And they are not all created equal. There are kind of different opinions on this, whether you should do a spinning disk one, because you know, even if kind of the electricity gets pulled last minute, the actual files are like written to the spinning disk, or many people actually prefer a solid state drive. However, a good quality solid state drive or a good quality spinning disk drive is a place to put that second copy. So you have it at your home, you ideally don't have it in your basement, but you so that you have another copy kind of on you, in order to access.

The third place would be this can kind of this really varies. I, for myself, think of that third place as being the kind of local device like your computer, if you have space, you can have a second drive. Or if this is something you digitized, that original physical item, if you kept that physical, that original physical item would be the third copy. So let's say it is that 35 millimeter print, you'd have one copy, that's the original physical print, one copy at a home, external hard drive and one copy on the cloud.

I really would highly suggest the files that are really important to you, you create a naming convention for that makes sense to you, that kind of conveys what kind of what and when the file is, and some type of information around around how to find it, the things that are really important doing the extra going through and like kind of giving them information so that you know what they are. And so that kind of a stranger or a community member that you want to share it with, would kind of know what this is, is quite important.

I ran a workshop on this in November, I tried to make a mini archive for myself, in order to kind of go through the process before having the conversation. I fully did it for I'd say about 120 to 150 photos that were just sitting on my phone to find out how would I go through this. And that took a substantial amount of time. But as a result, you can they all kind of chronologically list, they will be listed in chronological order, no matter what, you know, if you transfer them onto your local machine, they will still be in the correct order.

And then in addition to doing that, I created a spreadsheet that listed all of that information, the date, the person, the location, so it kind of creating a very fast quick, you know, home archive. And it's something that is shareable between platforms, because we're talking about, you know, you could download this folder of files, it would be an order chronologically, because that's in the file convention. And then there would be a spreadsheet.

Michael Pierry
Yeah. So like, for example, on on the iPhone, the Photos app, tries to do this sort of thing automatically, using AI. It will try to, you know, organize things for you. And it does sort of, you know, good job, depending.

David Scanlon
Yeah.

Michael Pierry
Like, it can recognize photos of you know, a dog and it could recognize photos of a person. But as you said, it's not going to be cross platform in that way. So if somebody has -- somebody doesn't have an iPhone, and you want to share it with them, it's not very easy to do. It's not very convenient.

David Scanlon
Yeah.

Michael Pierry
And it's also not perfect. So like, if you put in the effort of doing this yourself, you know that you're going to get exactly what you want out of it rather than just Apple or Google or somebody just applying an algorithm and hoping for the best.

David Scanlon
Yeah, I think having if you have thousands and thousands of photos and you want to deal with all of them, using Google Photos is gonna be the way to go. The thing that I'm talking about is definitely those kind of like, that batch of very important things, and doing it for that.

Michael Pierry
Yeah, it's more of a smaller subset.

David Scanlon
I mean, unless you can kind of suddenly get like a grant and a small team for your family.

Michael Pierry
[Laughter] So where can people go to learn more about digital preservation?

David Scanlon
There's a bunch of wonderful institutions, I mean, particularly institutions that have kind of collaborations like I mentioned before -- like between the computer scientists, electrical engineers, and librarians or information specialists -  are definitely kind of at the heart of figuring out, you know, how are we going to do this well? 

The best, best, best one is definitely Library of Congress. I find it very useful and very kind of user friendly. When I have a question of kind of, how should I save a picture? Do I want it to be a PNG or a JPEG? What's the deal with a PDF? The Library of Congress is absolutely where I go for those types of of information. They have a lot of great charts of just, talking about file types,  just click on file type, or you want pictures, here's what we're saying about each of those file types.

There's also the National Archives, they have a lot of information on how to do this well, information on what they are doing to preserve things. There is the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, they kind of bring together -- I mean, it's, as the name suggests, can bring together a lot of different organizations that are working on this -- but they have a lot of great information for what you should be thinking through.

And I also kind of want to hype the Internet Archive, I think they're doing -- they're doing a lot of work of actual digital preservation. I wouldn't -- they're not the place that I would necessarily go to for these kinds of how to questions. But they would be, I mean, I don't know any other organization working on the scale, and working with kind of the like ambition of scale that the Internet Archive is attempting to do and actively doing.

I would also suggest any large scale research institution usually has a lot of expertise in this. That could be Yale, Harvard, University of Wisconsin, any of these large scale research universities or you know, places like the National Institute of Health, but there's a lot of great information out there. These are really hard questions that no one specialty is going to be able to answer. These are all topics that require collaboration. So it's not something that one person will be able to kind of answer for you. So getting help from these types of institutions is kind of crucial.

Michael Pierry
Well, thanks again for taking the time, Dave. You have a new album coming out. When is that?

David Scanlon
I have new album coming out. I mentioned at the beginning that I'm also a musician. I have an album coming out in April, April 14, I'm hoping that it will be preserved well. I don't -- I think at this point, the files are on multiple, multiple places. So it should be good. But yeah, April 14. There is a release show in the area at Neverending Books on April 14.

Michael Pierry
It was great talking to you today.

David Scanlon
And thanks so much for having me. And please bother me with all the questions you have on this topic. I truly enjoy the time of kind of digging through these things.

Michael Pierry
Awesome. Talk to you soon.

David Scanlon
See you all.

Michael Pierry
We're living in a world in which it is impossible to get by without having digital skills and access. Helping people in our community develop those skills and giving them that access are among the most important services that public libraries can offer today. If you're listening to this, and you're a Hamden patron, you may already be aware of the library's Digital Navigation program. If you're not, it's essentially a program that allows you to book an appointment with your own private computer tech guru or tutor.

We currently have two full time people who are our Digital Navigators, and they can help you with all kinds of issues related to all of your computers and smart devices. To give you some idea, they had over 160 appointments this past November through January alone. Some of the things our navigators helped people with included assistance with devices, home connectivity, digital skills, and even research. In addition, as of January 2023, the Digital Navigator Program has distributed 47 laptops and 18 tablets to those in need.

The digital navigators aren't the only staff who can provide computer help at the library, but they are the ones that can help you with issues you're having that might take some time to figure out or resolve. For instance, perhaps you're trying to get assistance with home internet through the FCC's Affordable Connectivity program. Or maybe you just want to think through how best to organize the photos on your phone or files on your computer. Whatever it is, you can call the Digital Navigators. To make an appointment, call 959-261-0689 and leave your name, phone number, and a brief description of how they can assist you. A Digital Navigator will contact you to schedule an appointment at Miller Memorial Library, Brundage Community Branch Library, the Whitneyville Branch library or any public location that works for you.

Michael Pierry
Jessica Dans is the head of Technical Services at Hamden Public Library. She wears so many hats and does so much for the library. But today we're gonna talk about digital media. Jessica, thanks for making the time.

Michael Pierry
No, thank you for having me.

Michael Pierry
Digital Media -- as in ebooks, audiobooks, streaming video, and other online content -- is a big part of what the library offers its patrons. Roughly how much of the library's circulation now is digital content versus physical media such as books and DVDs?

Jessica Dans
Well, last year, we had over 230,000 checkouts and renewals of physical items, and over 37,000 checkouts and renewals of digital content. So that would mean about 86% of our circulation is physical items. And 14% is electronic media. We actually call our online content our "digital branch" and it really does have that much significance. If you look at our checkouts overall, it has the second highest circulation of all of our branches.

Michael Pierry
Wow. And I'm guessing you expect the number of digital checkouts to keep increasing.

Jessica Dans
It has been increasing every year. It's, it's growing exponentially.

Michael Pierry
Yeah. So for people who may not be already familiar, what apps are available to Hamden Library patrons for streaming and downloading digital media, and what types of content are available on each app?

Jessica Dans
Well, we have three different services that you can use to access on a variety of devices. First, there's Hoopla which includes ebooks, audiobooks, videos, and comics. Then there's OverDrive, which is ebooks, audio books, and magazines, and finally Kanopy which is movies and television. And you can access all this material in a variety of ways.

If you don't have a smartphone or tablet, you can always stream any of the content on your desktop through a web browser. If you do have either an Android or an Apple phone or tablet, you would need to install the apps for the particular devices onto your device. So Kanopy and Hoopla have self named apps. While OverDrive you would need to look for an app named Libby. Amazon Fire tablets are a bit trickier. 

There are apps available for Kanopy and Hoopla through Amazon. But for OverDrive, you need to install the Libby app through the OverDrive website. So if you're trying this at home, you could just do a Google search for "install Libby on Amazon Fire" which will take you to the OverDrive page with the app link and instructions for loading onto your Fire tablet. There's a few hoops to go through. But the OverDrive site gives you step by steps instructions so it's not a huge ordeal. People can access it pretty easily. And then for Kindles all you can access is the OverDrive ebooks, so Hoopla and Kanopy aren't compatible at all with the Amazon Kindle readers.

And then finally, for video, if you have a streaming service like Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, etc. You can install apps for Hoopla and Kanopy and that way you can watch movies and TV shows right on your television.

Michael Pierry
Wow. So basically, we've got digital content to offer you no matter what device you've got.

Jessica Dans
Pretty much you can access it for all sorts. You don't need to have the latest version of the iPhone to access data. It's accessible to just about anybody.

Michael Pierry
Right? Does the library have control over what titles are available on each app?

Jessica Dans
Well, with both Kanopy and Hoopla patrons have access to everything that's included in their collections, which is thousands of titles for both services. So anything you've searched for that you can't find with Hoopla or Kanopy, it's not available through them at all. With OverDrive, individual titles need to be purchased before patrons can access them.

So we subscribed to OverDrive through LION, our consortium and we share the collection with about 30 other libraries. Most of the titles are purchased through a committee organized by LION, but individual libraries can add their own titles to the collections if they want. So you can search for a title OverDrive, and it's not in the collection, you may see an option to recommend the title for purchase. It's -- not all titles are available. So if you don't see that option, the title isn't available, but you can always put the request in if you want, if it's if the option is there.

So for Hamden, if three or more patrons requested title, we'll try and order if the LION committee hasn't ordered it already. If two Hamden residents recommend it, we'll generally order it if it's $6 or less. We really won't consider a title that only has one request, because we get so many. We get hundreds of purchase request every month, so it just isn't financially possible to purchase them all.

Michael Pierry
Right, that makes sense. And that's very enlightening about that process.

Jessica Dans
Yes.

Michael Pierry
Um, another thing our patrons may wonder, why do they have to place holds on popular titles in OverDrive, for example, but not on Hoopla or Kanopy.

Jessica Dans
So that's based on the licensing models for the different services. Hoopla and Kanopy both use pay per use model that allows for simultaneous checkouts. So the library doesn't actually purchased anything from the vendors. We're just charged by each checkout for a particular title. And it can be checked out by as many people at a single time as as they want. Whereas OverDrive uses one copy one user model, but library purchases as a title, and then they're allowed to lend it to library patrons one at a time. And generally, the publishers decide whether the titles are simultaneous use or one copy one user model. Most of the publishers prefer the single use model, which is why you won't see the latest bestsellers available through Hoopla. They're only available through OverDrive, one user at a time model.

Michael Pierry
That leads me to another question patrons may have about ebooks. So most of us have gone on Amazon, or another online store and seen ebooks for sale. At a fairly inexpensive price point. I think I usually see Amazon ebooks for like $9.99 or something like that. How much do publishers charge libraries for ebooks? And why is the pricing so different than it is for print copies of the same title?

Jessica Dans
When you buy a hardcover or paperback book, you become the owner of that book. You can do whatever you want with it, you can keep it forever, you can share it with a friend, you could sell it on eBay. It belongs to you.

If you buy that book as an ebook, what you're actually purchasing is a license to access that book. You're absolutely not allowed to sell it to anybody. The ebook's publisher can decide whether you can share that book or not. There have been cases where people's ebooks have disappeared from their devices because a publisher has decided that for whatever reason, they no longer want it available.

The license that you purchase, when you get that ebook on Amazon is allowing you to view that ebook on your Amazon device, possibly share it with someone in your family or another Amazon device holder, but possibly not. It's very restricted.

When the library purchases a license for that access, the license that the library purchases is granting much more access: multiple loans to multiple users on different types of devices. Therefore, the publishers feel they should be able to charge more for an ebook license that they sell to a library rather than when they sell to an individual. The newest James Patterson book may be $15, to purchase on Amazon for myself, but it's going to cost me $75 to purchase it for just for the library, and that $75 license will expire in two years. So if I want to keep that title in the library collection, after two years, I'd have to pay another $75.

Michael Pierry
That's so interesting. I'm sure we could have, like, a whole other conversation about the pros and cons of digital licenses.

Jessica Dans
Yes.

Michael Pierry
Maybe sometime in the future, we can get into the weeds about that. But for now, how can patrons get started with using the library's Digital Media Collections if they haven't already?

Jessica Dans
If you visit the library's "Download and Stream" page, you can access all our digital content and find instructions on how to use them. There are text and video tutorials you can access that will walk you step by step through the process. If you're still not sure how to get started, you can always call or visit the Information Desk at the library or one of our other branches and staff will be happy to help you out. We've walked many people through the downloading process for the first time and it's, it's a great experience.

Michael Pierry
Yes, I've done it myself.

Jessica Dans
Yes.

Michael Pierry
It is fun. And people are usually very, very excited about it.

Jessica Dans
It is it's -- appreciation is like the best part. People are so happy that they can, they can do this.

Michael Pierry
Yeah. And it's great that we can offer so much to them. Well, thank you. That was great. Thank you again, for taking the time to answer my questions. Jessica.

Jessica Dans
Well, thank you for having me. And I'm sure our patrons will be very interested to hear about this. We get questions about it all the time. So it's good that you're doing this to share the information.

Michael Pierry
Awesome. Thank you. pleasure speaking with you.

Jessica Dans
You too. Bye. 

Michael Pierry
Bye.

Michael Pierry
Well, we've reached the end again. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like you can drop us a line at HamdenLibraryPodcast@gmail.com We always welcome your feedback. Next month in anticipation of the town's big Earth Day celebration. We will be talking to Joe DeRisi about recycling and other conservation efforts. Talk to you then.