December 5 |
 |
 |
City Library Stocks Same-Day's Papers from around the World
Source: The Vancouver Sun
Richmond-based firm supplies tabloid-sized versions of 150 newspapers, The Sun's Peter Wilson reports
For most libraries, today's newspaper today is little more than a concept. But not in Vancouver. Not any more.
If it's today's edition of the Philippines Daily Inquirer you're looking for, the Vancouver Public Library's central branch has it.
The same goes for Dong-Alibo from Korea, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, the Los Angeles Times the Washington Post and The Times from London.
They're on the stands in the central branch newspaper reading room.
And should you want, say, Gazeta Wyborcza from Poland, or the Jerusalem Post, or Moscow's Nezavisimaya Gazeta or Saudi Arabia's Al Hayat, you might be in luck too—eventually.
That depends on what library users say they want to read regularly and which library branch you use.
Thanks to a deal with Richmond-based NewspaperDirect—which supplies hotel guests, cruise-ship passengers and even homes around the world with 150 newspapers, including The Vancouver Sun—the central library and seven of the VPL's branches are offering 11×17-inch (tabloid sized) printouts of a selection of digitally imaged daily journals, available from more than 40 countries.
"We've found that the public are delighted to find same-day news at the library, and not have to wait for a few days until the paper comes in" said central library director Sue Yates at a launch event Wednesday.
"As well, it lets us provide more variety and more languages and they've been very, very pleased with that," said Yates.
Providing the papers as free printouts can be less expensive for the library than subscribing to them and having them delivered by mail. However, the publishers still get paid for each paper printed and can count them as part of daily circulation.
At the branch libraries—supplied by the central branch—the daily printouts are based on the cultural makeup of the community served.
"So what you might find at the Britannia branch will not be what you'll find at Kerrisdale," said newspaper librarian Mark Koep.
The library has launched a survey to see which of the newspapers patrons would most like to see printed out on a regular basis.
For Newspaper Direct president Miljenko Horvat, who started the privately held company in 1999 and is a selfdescribed newspaper fan, it's a chance to find out just what it is that both libraries and their patrons want, when it comes to printing out a daily newspaper.
The Vancouver Public Library is the first library in the world to install NewspaperDirect. The deal is based on a monthly minimum fee based on a per-paper-printed charge of $2.75.
Horvat, whose company has 30 employees in Richmond and two in New York and Britain and hopes to reach profitability by 2003, said he'll be following closely the results of this f irst move into the library market.
"Right now it remains to be seen how many people walk in in any given week and ask to see a newspaper from Iran."
"Nobody knows that today, because the newspaper is simply not available. It's simply not feasible economically to get that newspaper from Iran to here every day—or for anything other than the top 20 to 30 titles from around the world."
Publishers send electronic versions of their papers to Newspaper Direct in Richmond. There they are processed and made ready for distribution on demand. NewspaperDirect also sells advertising on the back page of the printout to local advertisers.
Horvat says that NewspaperDirect is using the VPL experience to help it when it makes its move to expand into libraries around the world.
"We already offer newspapers in hotels and cruise ships and we've even printed them in aircraft in flight and this is the next step," Horvat said.
NewspaperDirect moved the principal offices of the company from New York to Vancouver in 2000 because Horvat liked what he saw here.
"It was based on technology infrastructure, including bandwidth. It was people. It was a cost. And, as a sequence of economic decisions, we decided we were going to be a primarily Vancouver-based company."
|