Can libraries survive in a digital world? The British Library has aspirations to digitise all of its 14m books Publishers stand accused of "nonsensical" policies on e-book lending to libraries.
So, with nearly $1bn spent on e-books last year in the US alone, what does this mean for the institutions already at risk of closure? When publishers "declared war on libraries" last October - according to Luton's head of libraries - there was uproar. The Publishers' Association (PA) in the UK has agreed with the major publishing houses to restrict e-lending by either geographical location or the number of readers using an e-book at any one time. And when HarperCollins became the first publisher to put its head above the parapet and change its conditions to the libraries, there was further anger.
It believes that e-books should be given a licence for 26 uses and then this must be renewed at further - though reduced - cost. The "26-use" model was arrived at because, HarperCollins says, of the average lifespan of a physical copy in a library. eBooks, Privacy, and the Library « INFOdocket. In the past week, the eBooks in libraries topic grew even “hotter” when OverDrive and Amazon.com announced that their eBook lending partnership was going live for all OverDrive partner libraries.
When the announcement was made, I posted about a few concerns I had with the program including: Supply vs. Demand My experience has been long wait times for most of the books I want to read. I’ve heard this from others who use different OverDrive collections. Will libraries be able to keep up with even greater demand? Questions Here are a couple of the questions I asked OverDrive last week, with a few more that have come to mind since then.
Is Amazon collecting download information? I did hear back from OverDrive after sharing my questions with them, but instead of getting answers I was told to contact the Amazon.com Media Hotline. I have left two messages with contact info on the Amazon.com hotline and have not heard back as of Tuesday morning.Some of What I’ve Learned in the Past Few Days 1. 2. Public Library eBooks on the Amazon Kindle – We Got Screwed. Don’t get me wrong, as a consumer I was celebrating as much as the next guy (or gal) last week about library ebooks (from OverDrive) FINALLY being available on the ever popular Amazon Kindle.
I love my Kindle, I’ve written about it. The few textbooks and pdfs I’ve put on it make me love it more. But…. But as a librarian and an ebook activist (if I do say so myself) I have to say we got the short end of that stick my friends. I have been working an expansion of my May blog post for Library Renewal where I raised some concerns : new concerns have started to creep in as I think through the long term implications for this deal. But Gary Price over at InfoDocket has put together such a great list of questions and concerns I’m not going to reinvent the wheel.
Is Amazon collecting download information? To top it off today Amazon made some pretty big announcements today: including 3 new black & white ereaders, their first tablet and their very own browser. But I know we got screwed. From Me: