Can I start my own Public library to complement the governments public library system?

I don’t know if there are laws about it in the US but in the UK anyone can run a lending or reference library. My local Lesbian & Gay Foundation has a good collection. However there are rules about paying royalties to authors every time a book is borrowed.

Andrew Carnegie beat you to it by over 125 years

@meiosis but I want a better library…you can’t get much past grade 9 in my library… then it suddenly jumps to a few masters university textbooks…. I want to bridge the gap between grade 9 and Ph.D. so a person can home school themselves all the way through university….and beyond…without a huge expense… maybe I can apply for the Carnegie grant

Yes, you may open an exchange or book depository where patrons may borrow books.

@talljasperman Doesn’t your library have an ordering service? Here in the UK, if the local public library doesn’t have what you want, they’ll get it for you.

@meiosis no when I asked for a book to be ordered for purchase or just to add to their collection I get the stare…. and a no.. when I asked my library to order a book for me…my library isn’t adult oriented it is mostly geared for toddlers… my home library competes with their collection… but I can order any book in the Provence… but I tend to get failed and expired requests… most of the good books are off limits to people in my town.

@talljasperman That’s less than ideal. Here, the libraries cascade, so if the local one doesn’t have it, they’ll order from the tier above, and so on.

@meiosis I sometimes have to wait a year to find out that I’m not getting a book… I tried applying to the library as a worker and even for the board of governors but I get rejected… and told to go back to working night shifts at a local convenience store… so I resorted to buying my own books… and dreaming of one day owning my own bookstore or library…just so I can get some decent books….it’s hard to get good books online without a credit card.

If its a question of law, I think you can more or less anywhere. my problems with the idea are other ones.

how are you going to make money out of it, even enough to stay open? if you are going to charge people to get access to your books, then laws will probably change, and say you have to pay some kind of royalties.

To stand out from the other libraries you are obviously going to have to do something very different. its hard to compete with something that is free.

have you considered going digital with it? e-books rather than physical books. you could get rid of propert rental, and staff, and physical books. maybe a system where you offer the books online, to be read only from your site and not downloaded. you could use micro-fees and pay your royalties that way. i think something like that would be easier.

@poisonedantidote great idea… thanks… I don’t know how I will compete will Goggle though… but maybe I can do something a step at a time.

Amazon offers the Kindle for PC reader for free download.
They also have a huge collection of free books in many categories that can be downloaded to your reader app in under a minute. You might find some of what you’re seeking there.

I’ve done a little more digging and if you’re in the US you don’t have to pay royalties to the author each time the book is borrowed. Apparently Americans think that we (and Australians, who also do this) are nuts.

@downtide Really!? So, each time you check out a book at the library, there is a fee? Who pays it…the person borrowing the book or the library?
I think the OP is in Canada from the Provence reference in a later post.

@Pied_Pfeffer since libraries here are mostly owned and run by local town & county councils, I expect it’s the councils that pay. Which means we all pay, because that all comes out of our taxes.

@downtide interesting thanks…

@downtide @Pied_Pfeffer It’s called the Public Lending Right. It seems only fair to me, as the authors deserve payment for their labour, and by freely lending their books out, the libraries could well be depriving them of a sale. The UK government has taken a position that knowledge should be freely available to all those who want it, so pay for this out of general taxation.