Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling here due to cuts in government funding - nothing to do with these copyright laws as far as I can tell.
5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable chunk of change. Funding wouldn't need to be as large without those fees (which is why I suggested "all other things being equal. Of course all other things are not equal"). I'm just saying that without those fees, UK libraries would almost certainly be better. How much better? I dunno. Depends on how much the culture values libraries. US culture, despite having an anti-intellectualism bias in many areas, takes its libraries pretty darned seriously and tends to fund them reasonably well (though I'm sure more would be welcome, and many small towns don't have sufficient library resources), and most rights holders don't get to view libraries as a recurring revenue stream.
5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable chunk of change. Funding wouldn't need to be as large without those fees (which is why I suggested "all other things being equal. Of course all other things are not equal"). I'm just saying that without those fees, UK libraries would almost certainly be better. How much better? I dunno. Depends on how much the culture values libraries. US culture, despite having an anti-intellectualism bias in many areas, takes its libraries pretty darned seriously and tends to fund them reasonably well (though I'm sure more would be welcome, and many small towns don't have sufficient library resources), and most rights holders don't get to view libraries as a recurring revenue stream.