It's tough enough shaking a snickers bar free...

As always, Steven Cohen makes a smart observation on technology that's not being used for a library, but could be.

The basic thought Steven puts forth is vending machines for library books. This is inspired by the vending machines for books that are popping up in Paris and The University of Iowa (where you can buy books and kits for hand-made books), among other places. Steven envisions users swiping the bar code on their library card, selecting a book, and checking it to themselves.

Of course, you'd only be able to offer a limited selection of books through the machine, and it would only make sense to run the machine when the library isn't open. I can see all sorts of issues with the answer "We have the book in our collection, however you'll need to step outside and check it out of the vending machine." People will be thrilled with that, I'm sure.

But then again, do you stock the thing every night after you close? That seems like a lot of extra work. Of course, if it's popular, you'd have to re-stock it all the time anyway, so it might not be extra work.

To be fair, our library has rental books (super popular books) that are $1 for a week, as well as having regular circulation copies of the same titles. Patrons can wait for the regularly circulating copy to come back in or they can pay the $1 to take it home now. I suppose having them step outside (and without the $1 fee? with the $1 fee?) to get a copy of the book isn't that big of a hassle, but....

Here's an even more radical concept that isn't workable yet, but may be some time down the line. A vending machine for POD books. Yes. A vending machine that creates the book when you pay for it. These may exist, but I haven't heard of one. If there were public domain books, you could even have those be titles you could check out with your library card.

Of course, POD with library check-out may not be the best, or even a good, answer. If you didn't have the title in your collection before, who says that you'd want it now? The person who generates the POD vending book may be the only one that ever wants that title.

All the same, these are some interesting ideas. Who knows if POD vending machines, or even EBOD (electronic book on demand; something to load on a PDA, flash drive, or iPod? did I just invent that concept?) vending machines, will ever be something we need to concern ourselves about?