Authors benefit from library borrowing

An interesting library story: Ireland’s government recently decided that authors should be paid royalties each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library, rather than being paid the single royalty they get when a library purchases a book. Apparently, this is already done throughout Europe. I don’t know if there are plans to do something similar in the U.S., but it seems that this would be a tough one to implement here– it would mean all public libraries would have to have a consistent way of tracking and reporting book borrowing activity, which sounds very expensive and time-consuming, especially for non-automated libraries. Plus, the big question of who pays would probably keep it from happening here any time soon. (In Europe, the government pays.) But I do wonder if Europeans’ borrowing habits have changed as library patrons realize what they choose to take home from the library has an economic impact.