library wishlists
Interesting thoughts... Libraries Turn To Amazon Wishlists For Help
For all the stories recently about "cyberbegging", who knew that public libraries would resort to the same tactic? Facing drastic budget cuts, libraries are starting to put up their own "Amazon wishlists", and people are coming through - buying them the books they need to stock their shelves. While the recipients are happy, some are worried that this will only allow governments to cut back public library funding even more. There is also the question of how long-term a solution this is. Right now, my guess is that they’re getting a lot of donations due to the novelty of donating a book via Amazon (and the attention it generates). When every library has such a list, it may be harder to get the same donations.
It seems like if this was publicized on a local basis, people would be happy to donate a book or two. It seems to me that a lot of people enjoy and use the libraries, but they really don’t know how they could help the local branches out... put the Amazon wishlist URL in the local paper and say "these are the books that we would really like but haven’t had the funding to get yet." and watch, I bet the same people that read local papers would log on and buy a book for the cause. I would.
But I probably wouldn’t do it for a library outside of my area.[via Techdirt]
