Category Archives: eBooks

I have been reading more and more colleagues call for a solution to the current publishing problem in our country.  Some have mentioned the organization of Kickstarter as a possibility to raise capital to address the issue.

I guess that I’m feeling like something big is happening.  The more and more I think about how important information is, information policy issues, economics of information and control and restriction of information, I am coming to a singular conclusion.

I believe that the free flow of information is so important that we need to rise up to protect and foster that flow.  Moreover, I believe the virtual end to a public domain or knowledge commons is a threat to democracy.  I believe that the free flow of information is important enough to the very fabric of our society that it needs to be protected from capitalistic control.  To that end, I propose a non-profit digital publishing organization that will protect the interests of the citizen while rewarding the country’s creative output.

My children will enter a world in which nothing from the current century will be in the public domain.  The flow of information to them will be so bogged down by restrictions and DRM garbage that they may as well not have access to that information at all.

I am truly heartbroken that, in terms of access to unrestricted, vetted materials, my children will be worse off than I.  Even worse, this happened on my watch.

OK, so after listening to some great discussions about eBooks, the publishing industry and libraries both online and at ILEAD U, I have come to some conclusions.

First, the Amazon pricing model and the Apple iTunes pricing model have had an effect on the right of first-sale.  The question is whether or not there is any value in the right of first-sale. If I am purchasing an eBook or song for $9.99 or $1.29 do I really care about the right of first-sale?  Seriously ask yourself that question. With the rise of the iTunes Store, do people expect to sell the content they purchase digitally?  Copyright laws are not just written for libraries.  My guess is that, right or wrong, the general public does not value the right of first-sale.

Secondly, and more importantly, how do we plan to fix the problem?  David Lankes proposes libraries get into the publishing business.  OK, not exactly, but this is what I gather from his talk.  What if libraries created an eBook alternative?  Basically this would be an iTunes like store for content.  The authors win because they can determine their own pricing model.  Libraries win because we have a constant stream of DRM-free content.  He did not mention the pricing model for libraries, but I would imagine it would look something like this.  Give us the content.  We will take care of hosting, access etc… In return, we get a limited number of “copies” free to distribute to our patrons.  Other pricing models may work in this situation as well.  Perhaps patron-driven collections in which we pay per use (I do not favor this model, but it is still a model to consider).  Who knows. But it is clear that some conversations need to be held.

May I remind you that libraries of old housed their own content.  The libraries were built around the monks transcribing. Content was up to the libraries, not where the content went to die.  Moreover, many academic presses originated (and still live) under the library unit.  Still more, we have been developing our own platforms for sometime (most any ILS was developed by awesome libraries and librarians first!).

So lets take a look at this.  Do we have software developers who can create a platform that library users want to use?  Yes!  Do we have expertise in the eBook as format?  Yes, how many of us know that people want to be able to highlight, note-take, copy etc…  Do we have a strong working relationship with authors?  Yes.  Do we have experience in models like this?  Yes, just look at institutional repositories.  Are there other benefits?  Yes, we can educate authors on creative commons licensing (asking for a shorter copyright duration) improving the wealth of the public domain.  Moreover, we can bring more voices into the content creation arena.  How many great authors are silenced because they just don’t know how to get published?

Yes, this is a long-term strategy.  Yes, it will take time and resources.  Yes, it will be difficult.  But seriously, anything less than this is leaving control to a very select few.  The response from actual authors informs us that they want a new publishing model as well.

What will it take?  We will need people who have courage and are willing to take some risk.  We may need a grant or to engage in some fund raising.  We may need 1,000 people willing to put up $100 each for development and hardware.  We will need a team of the best and brightest.  But this can be done.  We can change the flow of information.  We can improve the lives of our community members through access to information.

Whether we know it or not, the gauntlet has been thrown.  The time is upon us.  Are we willing to recognize the writing on the wall?  Is it time to “stop acting polite and start acting real?”

Many academic libraries have something called an institutional repository.  The purpose of this repository is to collect and make freely available the work of scholars within a certain institution.  These types of repositories exist for certain domains or disciplines as well.  Libraries or groups spearheaded these efforts to make work freely available to all.  The best part is that this information is easily locatable through either Google (whether you love them or not), Oyster and via their own site.  They were created because the publishing model that currently exists just does not working for academics.

Well maybe this model does not work for the general public either, but no alternative has been suggested.  Perhaps public libraries need to get in on this.  As my colleagues Justin Hoenke writes, libraries are more about content creation now.  I think we need to create community repositories.  Local authors would be able to deposit their work (and lets face it, the vast majority of authors don’t actually make any money from their hard work) into these repositories.  Libraries can organize, and make available these works for the entire world.  This solves a host of problems (monopolistic copyright problems, abusive publishing tactics, easier preservation, flexibility to adapt to new platforms, etc…)

Libraries can, and have, been in the business of helping authors write better, publish and the like.  We offer programs, workshops, writing clubs, and myriad books on the topic.  This step would not be that difficult for us.  There would be some sunken costs up front, but easily defrayed over the course of a year or two.

This is a real option for us.  I too have bantered on about how victimized we are, but enough is enough.  I am going to switch my focus to offering constructive alternatives and solutions to real problems.  The tools already exist for us to carry out a program like this.  Perhaps it would take a decade to reach critical mass, but a large number of academic works already exist through these types of platforms.