What do you think about non-compete deals between public library's and university library's?

I.have never heard of such a thing….

@Dutchess_lll Maybe its just my city? I have never heard of it anywhere else.

I think you may be misunderstanding something. It’s possible that the university library will only let students check out books but you should be able to go there and use their library. There isn’t such a thing as a non-compete agreement but there may be a fee for non-students to use certain university resources.

@janbb I asked the public librarian why they don’t have new textbooks. They said that they have a deal with the RDC library. I will ask them again later when I return my inter-library (most likely not RDC ,Red Deer College) loan for plastic engineering in 3 weeks. I’m mildly curious.

^^ Oh, I see what you mean but it’s not really not competing. It’s more like not having overlapping collections. Different libraries have different collections depending on what population they serve.

No conspiracy here. The public library doesn’t buy textbooks because their role is to serve the public (in general) and not the university community.

Every library has a collection development policy that outlines their intended audience (demographics) and the types of materials they will purchase with their limited budget. I imagine that the public library buys lots of kids story books because that is one of their primary service populations.

Not only that, if they offered textbooks it undercuts the university racket on them. You can find old, outdated textbooks at the public library.

When I worked in an academic library, we actually didn’t carry textbooks since the first student getting there would get the book and nobody else. We did have some copies “on reserve” for students to use in the library.