Link: Kansas State Librarian Can Transfer Thousands of Titles From OverDrive to 3M at No Charge

The year-long battle of the Kansas state librarian to maintain control of her library’s OverDrive collection even as she plans to move it to a different vendor’s platform is coming to a head.

The Kansas state librarian is making steady gains in her unprecedented year-long battle to wrest the statewide consortium ebook collection from OverDrive’s platform and make it accessible, at no charge, on the new platform being offered by 3M.

To sweeten its offering, 3M has been negotiating with Amazon to make the 3M Cloud Library compatible with the Kindle ereader and is taking a position diametrically opposed to OverDrive’s regarding the transfer of previously licensed digital content to a different vendor’s platform.

At the same time, librarians across the state are worried about what percentage of the present consortial collection will ultimately be accessible via the new platform, which will be called EZ Library, and they are also concerned that the new deal will not be in place by the time OverDrive’s contract expires on December 5, creating a gap in service since access to the OverDrive collection is contingent on a contract being in place.

The prospect that service could be interrupted and the collection less than whole has prompted some of the larger public libraries in the state to begin negotiating independently with OverDrive and others to strike their own deals — even as they remain committed to resource sharing via the consortium and support the state librarian, Jo Budler, in her tenacious battle.

The situation also raises fundamental questions about the place of libraries in the digital landscape, particularly when it comes to the building and preservation of local collections.

See  the full story here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/892348-264/kansas_state_librarian_can_transfer.html.csp.