Library downloads building in popularity
RELATED ARTICLES
August 20, 2007
Freaky Family Guy and Dirt
...
More
August 17, 2007
1408 DVD
I feel as though I've written this before, so forgive me if you've already read it on this blog. 1408More
August 16, 2007
Captivity DVD
...
More
August 15, 2007
Poltergeist 25th Anniversary DVD
The cast of Brothers & Sisters celebrated the series’ first season DVD release at Disney’s Sept. 10 event at the San Antonio Winery in Los Angeles.
To celebrate Docurama’s Air Guitar Nation, Borders in Long Beach, Calif., hosted an in-store appearance by the film’s star, Björn Türoque (aka Dan Crane).
American Idol Bo Bice sang the Blades of Glory anthem at DreamWorks and Paramount’s DVD launch event in Venice Beach, Calif.
» VIEW ALL GALLERIES
» VIEW FEATURED GALLERY
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR...
LIBRARY DVD GUIDE: Patrons 'borrow' movies at home, library kiosks
By Buzz McClain -- Video Business, 8/30/2007
AUG. 30 | Imagine a patron walking into a library, plugging a USB cable into a kiosk and downloading a feature film in a few minutes, rather than borrowing a DVD. Or a patron simply sitting at home in front of a computer and going to a library’s Web site to perform essentially the same function.
“If you think of a library as a shared collection for the community to use, it only makes sense to also offer digital,” says Cynthia Orr, collections manager for the Cleveland Public Library. “We checked out VHS and Beta and DVDs, but a lot of people would prefer not to come into a building to pick up a DVD. [Downloads at home] make the library open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
And some of the libraries in Cleveland have stations where patrons can download a film directly to their laptop or PDA.
“We’re trying to keep up with the technology, so our users can take advantage of it, just as they did the old technology,” Orr explains.
Downloading movies at public libraries, either on site or over the Internet, already accounts for “tens of thousands” of downloads, “and it’s trending up at a pretty good clip,” says Brian Downing, VP and publisher of Recorded Books, a provider of digital content to library systems across the country.
“The service is growing every day in usage,” says Steve Potash, CEO of competitor OverDrive and its Digital Library Reserve service. “Each month, we hit a new record.”
The Denver library system was the first to permit patrons to download video, beginning in March of last year. Since then, hundreds of other libraries have begun offering video download services, and the number continues to grow.
“The libraries are very interested in technology; they feel they have to enhance their Web sites and make them more robust, and they see that any major Web site has video on it,” says Downing. “There’s not much debate in libraries—it’s ‘how do we do it and how do we afford it?’”
Recorded Books and OverDrive license documentaries and feature films from studios and distributors, solicit the libraries, manage the inventory and provide the download systems.
Potash says the libraries do their own marketing.
“It takes the community a few months to become aware of the new service,” he says. “Libraries market it themselves using their bulletins, newsletters and Web sites.”
Libraries also use the technology to upload their own content, such as author events, public service footage and original programming, and then other libraries around the country can make the material available to their patrons.
Orr says DVDs are “still very, very popular” but that downloads are catching on quickly. She believes “blockbuster movies,” in addition to the travel and how-to documentaries already offered, will speed up the popularity.
Studios’ reluctance to make popular films available for downloading is slowly eroding. Library downloads generally can’t be ripped and burned to a disc, which should ease piracy concerns. Potash says the situation could change “for some lower-cost material—self-help, public service films—to permit burn [to disc] on a title-by-title basis.”
But under current terms, downloads are automatically eliminated from a patron’s hard drive once the lending period has expired. Libraries set their own lending periods as well as quantity limits.
Rights holders’ concerns over losing revenue to unauthorized downloading practices isn’t new; libraries experienced similar delays when digital versions of books were first introduced.
“We had the same [reluctance] with e-books,” recalls Orr. “Publishers did not want to give up the rights for fear of being ‘Napsterized.’ Even now, years later, J.K. Rowling still won’t allow Harry Potter books to be e-books.”
But once a few major rights holders sign on, the rest will quickly follow, Orr believes, particularly when they see how popular the digital platform can be.
The dominos for video might begin to fall this month. Though not naming studios, Downing says Recorded Books has signed contracts and begun encoding up to 700 feature films from “two major Hollywood studios, a large British studio, the premiere arthouse independent distributor in the country and a small private library of film. It will be a retrospective of the greatest and most popular movies made from 1930 to 2005.”
Potash says libraries can begin a downloadable service for as little as $2,500, while some metro libraries are spending $50,000 a year.
Video suppliers that have signed on admit their margins aren’t the same as at retail. But “it was surprising to me to see how much business [OverDrive] was able to generate,” says Burgess Wilson, VP of digital operations for Image Entertainment, which licenses some 800 catalog titles to OverDrive. “We’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the revenue we’ve seen come back through the system. It has been a fair revenue stream, and because we’re focusing on catalog programming, it is revenue that would not otherwise be coming in. And it’s involving a segment of people who otherwise would not be participating in this space.”
“Nature titles, IMAX titles, they do very well,” says Mitch Mallon, VP of digital sales and marketing for Image Entertainment. “But classics, products you can’t find on the shelves at traditional retail, we’re finding there’s a real taste for those titles. Urban does well—it just depends on where the library is located.”
To that end, Image is working to organize content to suit particular local jurisdictions. To encourage more libraries to sign with OverDrive, Image provides “flexibility to the library so they can make their [offerings] regional,” says Wilson.
“Our job now is to find more content that fits that model and variations for that content,” says Mallon.
Libraries “are helping train customers” to accept downloading as routine, Mallon says. “That’s the beauty of it. They’re getting people adjusted to viewing digital content.”
This isn’t news to Orr. “Libraries helped create the VHS and Beta market,” she says. Patrons “would come in and check them out and sometimes even check out the players, and take them home to try them. Then they’d buy their own.”
