Sometimes you have to pay for it

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Sometimes you have to pay for it!

• Tim Rogers
• Johnson County Library
• rogerst_at_jocolibrary.org

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Sometimes you have to pay for it!

• Thoughts on paying for content
• Goodness and badness in fee free
• How we get it funded
• How our partners can help
• Questions?

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Johnson County Library

• Public library serving nearly 400,000
• 13 locations with a central library
• 80 paid databases
• Additional content vendors
• Self-created content

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We dont need to pay for content!

• Theres a lot of stuff available for no charge on
  the Internet
• People can get to it with free search engines
• Finding seems easy
• People do it all the time and dont need a card

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We need to pay for content!

• Cool content costs real money
• Cool stuff often requires specialized
  finding/viewing tools that arent free (at least
  at first)
• Because its not as widely available, we need to
  spend to tell them its there and how to use it

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And really

• The free stuff can cost us too
• Self-created content isnt cheap
• Applications needed are not ubiquitous
• Real cost time

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Goodness

• Fee-based
• Available
• Accurate
• Authoritative
• Stable
• Easy to use

• Free
• Always new
• Variety of viewpoints
• Authentic voice
• Easy to find something

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Badness

• Fee-based
• Expensive
• Can be complex
• Hidden in librarys web world

• Free
• Inaccurate
• Unauthoritative
• Unstable
• Overly complex

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Framing the question

• Its not your fathers content
• Content has no value without context
• Perceived value helps drive cost
• Nothing is free except anonymous gifts
• Know how much you spend

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How we get it funded

• Books are still meat and potatoes
• Talk about the stories not the title counts
• Do the math free stuff costs you too
• Dont just talk about your databases
• People remember give them a new memory

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How can our partners help?

• Identify markets with us
• Joint promotion
• Lobby at the federal, state, and local levels
• Help us think of the final customer
• Dont let us not let you

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Fee Bee v. Free Bee?
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Comments?

• Tim Rogers
• Johnson County Library
• rogerst_at_jocolibrary.org