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The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s $4 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) has helped about 20 percent of U.S. libraries make improvements to publicly available technology resources and digital literacy within their communities, according to a report released on Monday by the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP).
Christopher Harris shares his thoughts on how rural districts—with an average size of 1,100 students and less than half the budget of the average New York school district—are, in effect, subsidizing the state’s large, wealthy, suburban systems, which are purchasing the same content at the same cost per building.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today issued a response to American Library Association (ALA) President Maureen Sullivan’s open letter, which on Monday sharply criticized the ongoing refusal of several major publishers to sell ebooks to libraries. The AAP’s response counters that “publishers support the concept of e-lending but must solve a breadth of complex technological, operational, financial and other challenges to make it a reality.” Individual publishers are working to address these challenges, and antitrust laws prohibit publishers from convening to find common solutions to these emerging issues, the statement argues. It goes on to question the timing of the open letter, noting that the AAP had scheduled a meeting between ALA and more than 100 representatives from the publishing community in a few days.
