Just books - coming to a town or iPad near you?

My last post somehow found itself on the front page of both the Vex News and Quadrant websites as recommended reading.  Disconcerted, I've been wondering how to retrieve my reputation as a Big Government loving bureaucrat.  Luckily, Twitter presented me with this article today,

For those who can’t be bothered reading the whole thing, it’s a Forbes India interview with Sunder Rajan, the founder of a private company called Just Books.  Just Books is a lending library ...except it’s a private lending library - entirely funded, run and founded by Rajan and his private company, which works on a franchise model.  In the article one of the franchisees says that he makes Rs 2500 per month off the average customer borrowing two books and a magazine, but this appears to be a typo in the article - the annual subscription cost is Rs 2500 - the monthly fee is Rs. 250.  Just as well - Rs. 2500 works out at around $50 Australian, which would be a ridiculously high fee even here.

I had a number of questions when I read this article - What’s so special about a library that uses RFID and moves books between branches? (Pretty much every public library in Australia will have done this, or at least planned for it, by 2015)  Don’t India’s public libraries already do similar things?  How do ordinary Indians afford to pay to borrow books?  How much is Rs 250 to the average Indian?  Why is there a market for a private library service in Bangalore?

Private library service?

The last question is probably the most important, and the most useful.  Private library services have been tried in richer countries like Australia, and failed.  Victoria has a particularly interesting history when it comes to subscription libraries and an attempt at privatisation.  The Mechanics Institute buildings that litter Victoria were once vibrant and full, usually including a circulating subscription library.  Only one Mechanic’s Institute library remains (in Prahran) - no longer a subscription library but maintained with funds from the State Government, essentially a relic kept open because of its historical link to the past and extensive local history collection.  The Athenaeum Library is the only other surviving subscription library of note, operating out of the Athenaeum Theatre building in Melbourne.

Public libraries run and funded by local governments have replaced the Mechanics Institutes and other subscription library services - generally offering superior service and a wider range at a more efficient cost.  When the Kennett Government forced local governments to put a large percentage of their services out to tender under Compulsory Competitive Tendering legislation, public library staff found themselves having to write tender documents in order to keep their jobs.  Ultimately, they were the only ones tendering - there were no expressions of interest from the public sector.

That’s not to say they couldn’t.  Some public libraries in the United State and, more recently, the UK, are now being run on contract by Library Systems Services (LSSI).  Such outsourcing arrangements have not been without controversy, but the reality is that LSSI is able to provide broadly the same services these libraries traditionally provided, at a lower cost (even if there are arguments about whether, long term, this is the best model for a really high quality service).

Outsourcing to a company providing library services to all citizens, however, is quite a different thing to the Just Books model.  Just Books doesn’t really provide a public library service - they provide a book hire service.  The terms and conditions explicitly state that they can reject anyone’s membership for any reason, and that only the person who has joined may read the books, unless by prior agreement with them.  This is very much the Blockbuster or Video Ezy model, rather than the outsourced public library model.

5 libraries for 9.6 million people

The crux of the problem seems to be that India’s public library system, including in Bangalore, has been under-resourced and undervalued for many years.  Yes, I get that India is still a very poor country, but I’m surprised that, from what I can gather, India’s public library service is quite bad, with old and damaged stock and a severe shortage of locations and material.  It appears that my assumption that India would have a widespread and well-resourced public library system - with its long literary and learning tradition, it’s famous public service, seemingly endless supply of educated engineers & IT specialists and its British colonial history - was well wide of the mark.

As far as I can