Due to budget cuts, the British Library (which includes a copy of every book published in the UK) is proposing, amongst other things, to charge researchers for admission to the reading rooms. [via Galleycat]
The reaction to the proposals has been outrage, but it made me think - why shouldn’t libraries charge, even for borrowing books*? We pay to rent CDs and DVDs from libraries and elsewhere so why should books be free? Particularly if paying to borrow them could improve resources overall and perhaps lead to increased royalties to authors who are often conflicted about their books being loaned rather than purchased.
Would you pay to borrow books from a library? Yay or nay and why?
* charging for borrowing isn’t one of the proposals, only for access to research materials.