The new service helps initiate calls to Congress

The American Library Association has partnered with mobile phone marketing and outreach provider Mobile Commons to launch a new text message alert and advocacy service for librarians.

Each month, subscribers will receive an estimated 2 to 3 text message action alerts from ALA’s Office of Government Relations. The messages will give subscribers talking points on a specific, timely issue, and then offer the option of automatically making a toll-free call to the offices of their legislators.

The Mobile Commons service has proven to be a powerful advocacy tool for other organizations. In January, over 200,000 people—primarily users who had signed up for text alerts from Tumblr, Reddit, Engine Advocacy, and the Center for Rights—used the Mobile Commons platform to call their Congressional representatives in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

“Sites such as Tumblr may not be Washington insiders with traditional lobbying efforts, but they were able to harness their massive reach and make their voices heard,” Jed Alpert, Chief Executive Officer of Mobile Commons, said in a release at the time.

Advocates who wish to sign up for this new, library-specific service can text the word “library” to 877877 or sign up online at districtdispatch.org/textalerts.

“This timely program will make it much easier for library advocates to stay informed and get involved in the issues facing our nation’s libraries,” Ted Wegner, ALA grassroots coordinator, said in a May 3 blog post by ALA Press Officer Jazzy Wright.

Colorado’s Marmot Library Network, Anythink Libraries, Wake County Public Libraries in North Carolina, and eiNetwork libraries in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County will all soon begin working with the DCL model. The news comes less than two months after San Mateo-based Califa Group, the largest library network in California, also announced plans to adopt DCL’s library-owned, library-managed ebook model.

Anythink is one of many systems adopting the DCL Model

And, already this year, DCL has brought several new publishers into the fold, including Dzanc Books, children’s book publishers Gareth Stevens and Crabtree Publishing, educational materials provider Infobase Learning, cooperative publishing house Book View Café, mystery publisher Poisoned Pen Press, and ebook self-publisher Book Brewer.

DCL Director Jamie LaRue said that legal framework documents that DCL developed in conjunction with Mary Minow at LibraryLaw.com have helped facilitate discussions with publishers since January.

“Putting that common-understanding legal framework in place has saved us a lot of time with publishers,” LaRue told LJ. “It always begins when the publisher says ‘well, you just want to give it away, right?’ And we say, ‘No. we attach Digital Rights Management and we restrict [circulation] to one user at a time, just as we have always done.’”

This misunderstanding about ebook circulation at libraries appears to be a common one. In February, after leading an American Library Association delegation to New York to discuss ebook lending with representatives from Penguin, Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster and Perseus, ALA President Molly Raphael noted that “some publishers had the impression that libraries lend to whomever visited their respective websites, thus making collections available virtually worldwide without restriction,” according to an ALA release.

LaRue said assuring publishers that DLC uses the industry-standard Adobe Content Server DRM tools, and that the library system buys multiple copies of ebooks based on demand from their community, makes the arrangement sound more familiar to publishers.

Integrated Vu

The expansion of the DCL ebook model to Marmot, AnyThink, WCPL and eiNetwork was the result of a separate project. In 2011, DCL had begun using VuFind+, a version of the VuFind open source OPAC and library resource portal that Colorado’s Marmot system had enhanced “with modern search capabilities, faceted navigation, location-sensitive holdings displays, social web features, links to the Prospector regional union catalog, and integrated obituary discovery,” Marmot Director Jimmy Thomas wrote in the organization’s latest annual report.

DCL’s developers, naturally, had then begun enhancing VuFind+ to work more seamlessly with all of the new ebooks that they were storing on their own servers.

These enhancements by Marmot and DCL have since been merged into one new version of VuFind+, which was quickly adopted by Anythink, as well as WCPL and eiNetwork. Trying the DCL ebook model at these other libraries is a natural next step.

Thomas said that in a recent conversation he told LaRue, “what you and Douglas County are doing with ebooks is a very cool demonstration project. I’d like to prove that the concept is scalable, I’d like to see if I can make it work with 21 more libraries in the state, in a multi-type consortium setting.”

Ebooks purchased direct from publishers will supplement each library’s existing Overdrive content.

The DCL model has been quick to generate interest throughout the library community, but by virtue of its origin at DCL, Colorado is becoming the nerve center of the growing concept. After Thomas and LaRue shared information about their plans with other groups in the state, the E-voke Committee was formed to focus on “ebooks and their future in Colorado, with an eye open to other forms of E-content (audio, video, other).”

The group includes representatives from DCL, Marmot, the Colorado State Library, the Colorado Library Consortium, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, and Auraria Library. Their website, evoke.cvlsites.org, already includes a simple “How to Do It” page, including links to letters, forms and agreements to send to publishers, an annotated, regularly updated list of publishers that have already demonstrated willingness to sell econtent, links to server and ebook authoring support software, and documents detailing technical aspects of the system, such as a recommended server farm layout.

However this movement evolves, Thomas said that he and the rest of the group felt that libraries simply had to stay involved during the rapid growth of the ebook market.

“What’s clear is that we have to do something,” he said. “Whether we make mistakes and get bloodied doing something that’s completely crazy doesn’t matter, because moving forward in this arena is hugely important to readers.”

As LJ has reported, other libraries and organizations are currently considering DCL’s library-owned, library-managed ebook model, including Lyrasis, the State Library of North Carolina, the South Carolina State Library, the Queens Library, the Tampa Bay Library Consortium, and others. LaRue told LJ that a coalition of public libraries in Dallas, and the state librarian of Massachusetts have also recently expressed interest.

Currently, the DCL model still has library systems and multi-type library consortia dealing with publishers on a one-to-one basis. Accustomed to working with distributors, the largest publishers may be unwilling to accept this model. But, as a growing number of libraries test the concept, their aggregate buying power is going to start drawing attention.

“Clearly publishers don’t want to develop a delivery system for just one library at a time,” LaRue said. “They need to know that it’s a model that has gained some traction and has some money behind it. …Everytime somebody comes on line and says they’re interested, we say ‘here’s a list of all the publishers we’ve dealt with.’ So [those publishers] are getting a good boost of business, and they’re seeing that they’re being well respected, and that being in this market means some immediate pickup.”

To hear more about the DCL model, check out Library Journal’s upcoming webcast “eBooks: a New Paradigm in Douglas County, or a New Twist on the Past?“ on Tuesday, June 12.

“We haven’t made a big thing about it because it will be July before it actually works,” said Coates, who predicted that after academic publishers, “Not the big six, but reasonably large publishers will begin to experiment. They’re saying, ‘let’s see what happens. We can always stop.’” Coates predicted the Big Six would follow suit once those experiments bear fruit, but some might not wait that long. “I can’t say which, but one of the big six publishers in London came to us this morning and said, can we do lending in a kind of particular way, which we are going to explore with them now. They were very keen,” said Coates.

In the meantime, Bilbary is expanding its library relationships by partnering with the not-for-profit cooperative Califa Library Group in California. (Coates first met with Heather Teysko, Califa Project Manager, at ALA’s Midwinter meeting in Dallas.) As with Bilbary’s partnership with the State Library of Kansas, the initial offering will consist of a link from a library website to Bilbary’s catalog for purchase.  In this case the Los Gatos Public Library in Silicon Valley will be the test case because, said Coates, Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos Library Manager for Adult Services, “was keen to be progressive and to see what can be done.”

Bankhead told LJ, “We are a small independent library in a relatively affluent community, so we thought it might not be too much of a stretch” to offer a for-pay alternative for ebooks that aren’t otherwise available through the library. However, he added, “I am very skeptical about whether anyone would be willing to pay for this content. I was led to believe it was very much more popular than I’m seeing. I’m not risking anything and I’m not required to pay anything, so we’re willing to try it, but I’m not going to endorse it at this point.”

As with Kansas, Bilbary will track purchases made by patrons clicking through from the link and allocate a percentage of the proceeds to Califa, though again as with Kansas, “they said that’s fine, tell us how much there is, but then spend it on the [lending portion of Bilbary’s] program,” Coates said, adding that both the Kansas and Califa library systems want to be able to go to major publishers and “say here are a lot of transactions from library patrons, we are keen to make this work, let’s build some bridges.”

Teysko could not immediately be reached for comment.

Nashville-based Ingram Content Group has expanded its ebook selection for libraries and will now offer a subscription option for popular Sesame Street ebooks.

The new Sesame Street ebookstore subscription on ipage, Ingram’s collection development site, offers access to more than 150 read-along, audio, animated and interactive books through their Ingram library account, accessible via any browser. The ebooks can be read on Mac, iPad, and PC platforms.

“The habits of readers are changing and libraries need comprehensive digital solutions to meet the needs of their patrons,” Rich Rosy, vice president and general manager, Ingram Content Group library services, said in an April 30 announcement. “Through our e-book options on ipage and our MyiLibrary e-book platform, Ingram gives libraries one central location for all their needs in the digital age. We are pleased to add Sesame Street titles to our collection.”

The new Sesame Street collection for Ingram’s ipage is supported by iPublishCentral, the digital publishing platform developed by Impelsys.

“Ingram’s network of libraries will connect more children with our e-books, content that’s proven to help them reach their highest potential. We thank both Ingram and Impelsys for helping us expand our reach and make a difference in the lives of children worldwide,” Scott Chambers, senior vice president of worldwide media distribution for the Sesame Workshop, said in a release.

Just because SOPA and PIPA seem to be dead in the water doesn’t mean legislative attempts to limit privacy are over. H.R. 3523, The Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), passed the House of Representatives on April 26 in a surprise vote: CISPA was originally scheduled for a vote on April 27.

The American Library Association (ALA)’s Washington office had asked members to contact their representatives to oppose CISPA, which now goes to the Senate. A coalition of many organizations, including ALA as well as the American Association of Law Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Society of American Archivists, Special Libraries Association, and many others, sent a letter opposing the bill on the grounds that “it constitutes a wholesale attack on public access to information under the Freedom of Information Act.”

ALA is also concerned that CISPA would allow, or even require, that ISPs and other entities monitor all electronic communications and share that information with the government without effective oversight. The government could keep the information forever and share it with other agencies. CISPA would preempt all existing privacy laws, including the 48 state library record confidentiality laws. According to ALA, library consequences could relate to cloud computing, higher education networks, privatized libraries and networks, and network/vendor contracts.

Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee announced on April 24 that they agreed to make several changes to the bill, which will be offered by members as amendments on the floor this week. These include a minimization, retention, and notification amendment, which would prohibit the federal government from retaining or using information other than for the purposes specified in the legislation; a use amendment, which would limit use of the information to cybersecurity purposes; investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm; protection of minors from child pornography, any risk of sexual exploitation, and serious threats to physical safety; and protection of the national security of the United States; and a definitions amendment that would narrow what information may be identified, obtained, and shared to information that directly pertains to a vulnerability of a system or network of a government or private entity; a threat to the integrity, confidentiality or availability of such system or network or any information stored on, processed on, or transiting such system or network; efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy such system or network; and efforts to gain unauthorized access to a system or network, not including efforts to gain such unauthorized access solely involving violations of consumer terms of service or consumer licensing agreements.

On April 26, ALA President Molly Raphael sent a letter to members of the House asking them to support the Amash/Labrador/Nadler/Paul/Polis Amendment to CISPA, which seeks to protect library circulation and patron records as well as book sales records and customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return, education and medical records.

“If the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act requires the approval of a federal judge and a senior FBI official before accessing sensitive documents, we should not allow the government access to such personal information without similar and adequate oversight and accountability,” Raphael said.

A vote on Amash amendment was postponed, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which live-tweeted the amendment process @EFFLive, using the #CISPA hashtag.

Beyond supporting this particular amendment, Raphael also called on members of the House to better clarify and narrow the bill’s definition of cybersecurity, and designate the Department of Homeland Security as the primary recipient of information shared under it, rather than the National Security Agency. The bill defines “cybersecurity purpose” as “[t]heft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.”

While calling for action on cybersecurity, the Obama administration has threatened to veto CISPA, according to CNET.

OverDrive will create and customize a website for each law firm or organization, and a librarian or designated administrator will manage it and acquire titles for the collection. Among the decisions the librarian can make, Osborn told LJ, are the length of the checkout period (from 7-180 days), whether books can be renewed, and whether there is a maximum checkout quantity at one time. Academic and government law libraries are expected to take advantage of the service as well as law firms and corporations.

In addition to LexisNexis’ more than 1,100 electronic legal titles, users will have access to OverDrive’s 700,000-title Content Reserve collection development portal. Many titles offer simultaneous access. “Individual LexisNexis eBooks range in price from $14 to $1,000+ and select titles are available by subscription,” Osborn told LJ. “LexisNexis Digital Library pricing varies and ranges from a single user, single copy approach to an unlimited use pricing model.”

Legal professionals can check out and return titles via the website, a mobile version of the site or a downloadable app. Books may be checked back into the digital library early if the user is finished with the title, according to Osborn. Otherwise, when the checkout period expires, the book is automatically returned.

LexisNexis eBooks are compatible with Windows and Mac computers, iOS, Android, Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and BlackBerry.

The records can be bulk downloaded from Harvard in the standard MARC21 format, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

The records contain bibliographic information about books, videos, audio recordings, images, manuscripts, maps, and more, including creator, title, publisher, date, language, and subject headings, plus descriptors usually invisible to end users, such as the equalization system used in a recording.

“The accessibility of the entire set of data for each item will, we hope, spur imaginative uses that will find new value in what libraries know,” said Mary Lee Kennedy, Senior Associate Provost for the Harvard Library.

Harvard also announced its open distribution of metadata from its Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) scholarly article repository under a similar license.

John Palfrey, Chair of the DPLA, said he hoped that this would encourage other institutions to make their own collection metadata publicly available. According to Harvard’s FAQ, other libraries that have already done so include 3 million records from the British Library, 5.4 million from Cologne libraries, 3.6 million from the University of Cambridge, and 8 million from OCLC’s OhioLINK–OCLC Collection and Circulation Analysis Project.

The release is an instance of Harvard putting its (lack of) money where its mouth is when it comes to open access; the news comes just days after the library sent a memo to faculty urging them to “move prestige to open access” by their actions, including where they submit their own papers and their actions on editorial boards and as members of professional organizations, because “major periodical subscriptions… cannot be sustained.”

Other instances of major institutions buying into open access this month include the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust cracking down on failure to comply with its open access mandate, and the World Bank adopting an open access policy.

That is 200 times faster than the current national average and 10 times faster than the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, according to the city-owned Electric Power Board (EPB) in Chattanooga, TN, which has connected its 600 square mile service area (170,000 business and homes) to its fiber optic network —- including soon the Chattanooga Public Library.

“We are three weeks away. It’s pretty close,” said Corinne Hill, who became the library’s director in February.

In 2010, Chattanooga became the first city to offer one gigabit broadband service in the United States for residential and business customers, but the library has not been a part of that because it was part of a county-city library system.

However, the city let expire a relationship with Hamilton County in July 2011 and took over responsibility for full funding of the local library, as LJ reported.

“We’re just moving over to the city network,” Hill said.

The city’s network is powered by Alcatel-Lucent’s gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology.

“It’s pretty phenomenal that we are doing this in a building that went up in 1976,” Hill said. “You realize you don’t have to rewire and that’s a big chunk of change.”

In addition to the speed, the new network opens up tremendous partnering potential for the library and can help make it the “creative hub for the community.”

“We are looking to create incubator space. We provide access to the speed and technology that’s not practical for you to have at home, but what you need to create content, whatever that content might be,” Hill said.

Because of the gigabit broadband service, Chattanooga is becoming “a really young and techy geek town,” Hill said, which opens up video conferencing and other business opportunities.

“We want to try to address the needs of entrepreneurs,” Hill said. “The folks you talk to don’t have offices; they just meet wherever. And to be able to provide those folks a place where they can meet and work and be around people doing like things has great potential,” she said.

Hill did not have specifics on cost but she said the new system will be cheaper than what the library now pays.

At the same time, Google has been laying its own gigabit fiber optic cable in Kansas City, on both sides of the state line, as part of a test of high-speed broadband networks that was first announced in 2010. Nearly 1,100 communities across the country expressed interest in this project, before Google selected Kansas City and began working with the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities (KCBPU) and Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L). According to the Google Fiber Blog, 100 miles of fiber had been laid as of April 4.

Both the Kansas City Kansas Public Library and the Kansas City Public Library in Missouri will eventually be connected, although the timeline remains a bit uncertain.

“We really don’t know when although they promised us it would be the first half of 2012,” said Carol Levers, the director of libraries in Kansas City, Kansas. “Google is very tight lipped.”

Levers said she was ecstatic when she first learned about the plan in December, and she saw it as a “community wide experiment” that would help close the growing digital divide. But there was a sobering side as well.

“A lot of times people say we are going to give it to you for free, and I have learned that nothing is free,” Levers said. “It’s free to the walls but to bring it into the building is going to cost us something, but we have no idea exactly what is needed.”

Google has not yet decided what it will charge for the service.

“We plan to offer service at a competitive price to what people are paying for Internet access today, but we haven’t yet finalized any pricing,” according to a Google FAQ.

Google has said it will provide the service to neighborhoods on a “demand” basis, and the Kansas City Public Library in Missouri created a public outreach program, Give Us a Gig, for members of the community to “get organized and go online to voice their demand for Google Fiber,” according to a library blog posting by Jordan Fields, the digital projects manager.

In a separate piece, Fields listed some of the potential benefits the library envisions from the high speed connection:

• Entrepreneurs could use library spaces to demonstrate their ideas and get feedback from community members as well as potential investors on new technologies that utilize the gigabit connection.
• Libraries could build technology collaboration stations that would provide a physical space for local students to create school projects using media-editing software and then publish their work to the web to share with their classmates as well as other students around the world.
• Libraries are already the front lines for closing the digital divide and they will continue to fulfill this role for the community. The Library will be the only place where ANYONE can access a gig for free, and librarians will be instrumental in educating the community about what can be accomplished with a gigabit connection.
• Libraries will continue to build online spaces for the collection of community-produced content, whether research and datasets, creative works, or family records and histories. Libraries could become, in effect, the community’s datacenter.
• In addition to allowing for the development and storage of community-created content, libraries could design apps and build online tools that use a gigabit connection to facilitate the sharing and use of that content by anyone. Through access to these tools, libraries will become the platform on which our community tells its story to the world.

Interview by Martha Cornog

Josh Elder of Reading With Pictures

Ebooks have been grabbing headlines throughout publishing, and librarians nationwide report mega-increases  in ebook circulations and requests. At the same time, a heap of comics publishers, biggie and petite, has gone digital in parallel with print—and the rest are probably planning something app-wise or thinking about it. But so far these trains don’t go to the same station very often. Libraries can’t circulate most eComics due to systems and DRM issues. And only OverDrive among the library digital vendors offers much in the way of recent release eComics, and that only a small fraction of what’s potentially available.

Now along comes the nonprofit Reading With Pictures (RWP), helmed by the ebullient Josh Elder, which has partnered with digital comics distributor iVerse Media to set up an interchange station. Dubbed ComicsPlus: Library Edition, the new service allows libraries to circulate a wide selection of digital comics with both user-friendly and library friendly features.

We’re delighted that Josh is willing to tell us more about their new venture and how it furthers RWP’s literacy goals—and the goals of libraries and classrooms, also.

 As I understand it, ComicsPlus: Library Edition will be an outgrowth of iVerse Media’s ComicsPlus, which offers over 10,000 current and back-title digital comic books and graphic novels from Marvel, IDW, Archie Comics, and over 100 additional publishers. With no upfront cost to libraries, some ad-supported comics will be free while “premium titles” will be charged to libraries on a per-checkout basis: $ .50 per checkout for a graphic novel and $ .10 for a comic book issue, with a monthly budget cap set by the library.

How did you and iVerse come up with this pricing model, which I understand is similar to the Freegal Music service in libraries? Could you give an example of an ad-supported title and a premium title?

Josh Elder: The pricing model came out of conversations I’ve had with public and school librarians all across the country over the past several years. They all said basically the same thing:

1. They want an easy-to-understand and transparent pricing structure.
2. They DON’T want fixed or upfront fees – only to be charged for what they actually use.
3. They have to be able to set a budget cap so that a few power users don’t burn through their entire annual allotment in a single month.

This is the program and the pricing structure that librarians have been asking for. As for what titles will be free vs. paid premium, that’s going to be up to the publishers. However, we expect that the publishers will make the first issues and inaugural volumes of popular series available for free along with selected backlist titles. The idea is that even when the monthly budget cap is reached, the service will never “go dark.”

As for which comics will be available,  we’re still negotiating with iVerse Media’s current publishing partners as well as reaching out to new publishers on a daily basis. So while I can’t yet confirm it, early indications are that most (if not all) of our existing publishing partners will sign on to the service and that we’ll be adding several new publishers to the iVerse catalog in anticipation of the launch.

Platform options for iVerse Digital Comics

In designing the program, you did marketing research among librarians. What did you learn from the research that was especially critical?

Every librarian we talked to was excited about the possibility of dramatically increasing patron access to graphic novel content while keeping the cost/circ ratio comparable to print. However, they’d all been burned in the past by services with hidden fees or fixed, upfront costs that never paid out the promised return on investment.

So we took away that risk by shifting to a pay-per-use model with local budget control. We also made our sales/accounting process as transparent and fair to all parties as possible. We’ve worked hard to make sure that this is the service that librarians need, and the one that they deserve.

My mother is a school librarian, and I don’t want to let her down. Because if I did, I’d never hear the end of it….

You just went public and announced ComicsPlus: Library Edition at the recent Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). What was the reaction to your announcement?

The response was phenomenal. I think my favorite was “Of course we’re going to sign up – there’s no downside!”

In fact, we’ve already begun fielding requests to join our Closed Beta. We want to plug the early adopter types into our system as soon as possible so that they can become a part of development process. We’re building this service, but it’s librarians who are the architects.

With some big print publishers mandating restrictive ebook lending policies, it’s gratifying to hear that your new service offers multiple simultaneous patron access and no limit to the number of checkouts per title. Do you think this use-friendly access will eventually become the industry-wide model when the dust settles on digital lending?

There’s no question about it, because that’s what the consumers/patrons/etc. are demanding. We’ll be first to market, but we certainly won’t be the last. Of course being the first isn’t as important as being the best, but we’re going to try our darnedest to be both!

The publishers available so far are those currently selling comics through iVerse Media, correct? Can other publishers join if they want to circulate their comics to libraries? Can self-publishers of comics?

The doors at iVerse are open to all publishers: large, small and everything in-between. We are actively recruiting children’s, educational, literary, and manga publishers for the library service right now, but all are welcome to submit.

Can libraries handle restrictions on checkouts by age and content? Or on comics already available at the library?

Librarians will have the ability to restrict access to certain titles or block them altogether. We know how important local control is, so those tools will definitely be available.

You mentioned that you’ll be doing “soft launches” of the service at selected libraries instead of beta testing. Could you say more about that?

It’s a little of “column A” and a little of “column B.” We’ll beta test the service at several libraries across the country, but our “soft launch” will also include a more in-depth and intensive experience at key libraries.

You’ve noted that this service will increase the access and availability of comics in libraries. Do you think that user data from the service could help show cultural decision-makers and the general public how popular and useful graphic narratives are?

We certainly hope so! I’ve spent the last several years working to bring comics into schools and libraries through my work at Reading With Pictures. Meanwhile, Michael Murphey and the code ninjas at iVerse have been using digital technology to make the comics medium more affordable, accessible and ubiquitous. We’re all comics evangelists, and every decision we make is guided by a single, overriding principle: Will this help comics? If the answer is yes, then we do it.

How can interested librarians learn more?

They can visit our website at www.iversemedia.com where we’ve set up a special “libraries” section just for them in the Products dropdown menu. Or they can contact me directly at josh@iversemedia.com. My door is always open to librarians. Because if it wasn’t, and my mom found out, I’d never hear the end of it…

By Sue Polanka

According to a survey conducted by the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) in the summer of 2011, 39 percent of public libraries had not begun to offer downloadable media service (ebooks, audiobooks, movies) to their communities. COSLA reported that small, rural libraries with limited budgets were most likely not to have access to downloadable media.

COSLA believes that ebooks will be the preferred format for reading materials in the future. As a result, it has set a goal for all U.S. public libraries to offer ebooks and downloadable media by 2015. As a step in that direction, LJ is publishing a series of articles that closely examines the various ebook platforms available, including this environmental scan.

Why buy ebooks?

There are a variety of reasons for purchasing ebooks, and the first is access. Offering ebooks extends content beyond the physical boundaries of the library. In a digital world, patrons aren’t restricted to brick-and-mortar hours. They can choose to download a new book late Sunday evening because content is available 24/7.

Furthermore, there has been an explosion of interest in ­ebooks and ereaders. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released research findings in January stating that ­“[t]he number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices (tablets or ereaders) jumped from 18 percent in December to 29 percent in January.” This has put demands on public libraries for not only digital content but also technical support for downloading content to devices. LJ ’s 2011 survey of ebook penetration in U.S. public libraries found that 66 percent of the respondents had experienced a “dramatic” increase in requests for ebooks in the past year. Additionally, there is no physical space required for ebooks. Virtual bookshelves don’t require weeding and shifting. The fear of loss of or damage to content also diminishes.

That said, ebooks have just as many reasons not to be purchased. They are more expensive than print, and their use is restricted with digital rights management (DRM). Content is often leased rather than owned owing to vendor license agreements. Moreover, annual fees are often required to guarantee perpetual access to content. The business models are much different from print models. Often, they are unsustainable for public library budgets. Publisher content may not be available for library lending—Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Penguin Group (the last of which ended its OverDrive contract on February 9) do not sell ebooks to libraries or library vendors. In addition, Random House raised its prices on March 1, in some cases tripling the cost of an ebook for libraries. ­Ebooks also require technology in order for the user to read them. If readers in one’s community have no access to that technology—ereaders, tablet devices, smartphones, or personal computers—they will be shut out of the ebook environment.

Community involvement

Before you decide to purchase ebooks for your library, consider surveying your community about their needs. Are your patrons asking for ebooks? If so, what type of content do they desire—best-selling fiction, children’s books, reference materials, or perhaps classic literature? What type of reading devices are they using—Amazon Kindles, Barnes & Noble Nooks, or Apple iPads, smartphones, or personal computers? This information will guide decisions about content and format, as well as keep the community involved in shaping a digital collection.

The value of this process was clearly illustrated at the Rockford Public Library, IL, in early 2012. Rockford made the decision to spend 25.5 percent of its budget on ebooks. It was met with strong opposition from its community, which formed the “Save Our Library” group to protest against the shift to digital. One of the primary complaints from the community was the lack of public input.

Free ebook content

For libraries with limited budgets, locating free ebook content is essential. The good news is that you have options. The bad news is that they are not the titles on the New York Times’s best sellers list. Nonetheless, there are thousands of sources for free ebooks available online. Just be certain you aren’t downloading pirated content, which is often found on large peer-to-peer file-sharing sites.

Two collections deserve special mention because they offer large collections in the U.S. public domain (whose copyright has expired). The first is Project Gutenberg. Established by Michael Hart in 1971, Project Gutenberg has been credited with creating the first ­ebook, of the Declaration of Independence. More than 40 years later, its collection has grown to over 38,000 freely available titles.

Another excellent option is the Internet Archive (IA). The archive digitizes text, movies, music, software, and websites. Its text collection includes more than three million items in both the public domain or written under Creative Commons licenses.

Both services offer online or downloadable reading and a variety of formats to fit nearly every ereading device. Furthermore, libraries may load title information into a local catalog for these collections. This option increases the discoverability of ­ebook content at the local level.

The IA also offers the In-Library Lending program—a collection created by libraries for libraries that the archive hosts. Any library may join the program and offer access to 200,000 ­ebooks published from 1922 to 2000. Titles are available for checkout, one user at a time.

Fee-based content

When the time does come to purchase ebook content, public libraries have a variety of choices. It’s important to evaluate all of the vendors, determine the expense and licensing of each, and calculate ongoing costs to determine if the model selected is sustainable. A few options are discussed briefly here and interviews with some of the executives can be found online.

Baker & Taylor Baker & Taylor (B&T), through its new Axis 360 digital media library and Blio ereading software, offers ebooks. Libraries can order more than 105,000 ebook titles using B&T’s Title Source. Circulation of ebooks takes place using the Axis 360 digital media library with cloud-based delivery of content. Finally, the Blio reader is used to consume and interact with the content. The Blio reader specializes in full-color content, interactivity, and accessible features. ­Ebook programs start for as little as $500 per year. This low cost of entry allows for an individual library to have a personalized collection for its community. Patrons need not compete for title availability within a larger consortia. In spring 2012, it will offer EPUB and PDF files available for download to devices.

Freading Freading is a pay per use model for libraries. It offers more than 20,000 titles from dozens of publishers. After a small start-up fee, libraries pay for content as it is selected and used by patrons. Prices range from 50¢ to $2 per use, depending on the copyright date of the book. Content is never owned and the loan period is two weeks. Each book can then be renewed for a two week period for free or for a nominal fee, depending on the publication date of the book.  After the four week loan period, the book cannot be accessed without incurring a new download fee. On the other hand, this model allows multiple users to read the same title at the same time—no waiting. There are also no ongoing access fees for libraries. Patrons of participating libraries download content through the Freading site via prepaid “tokens” from the library. Libraries can choose the number of tokens available weekly to patrons.

OverDrive OverDrive, the largest public library ­ebook vendor, offers over 700,000 titles from 1000 publishers. ­Ebooks, audiobooks, and videos are available in a variety of fiction and nonfiction genres. OverDrive is the only library vendor at this time to offer direct download to Kindle devices. Titles are made available with rights to lend to patrons and include annual maintenance and hosting fees. Libraries with limited budgets are strongly encouraged to create larger purchasing groups, like the West Texas Digital Consortia. Another option is to join a preexisting statewide consortium. These are open to new members in most states. New members must be public libraries, be new to OverDrive, and serve a population of less than 100,000. Libraries in the consortium will pay annual participation fees. Current participation fees cover content as well as hosting and maintenance.

3M Cloud Library 3M launched its cloud library in June 2011. It currently has a stockpile of 100,000 ebook titles (other formats will be forthcoming) from 40 publishers. Small public libraries in a consortial group can be easily accommodated by the 3M service. It also has pricing terms for small libraries that wish to remain independent. 3M allows libraries to transfer content to another platform once a contract has expired if they wish to do so. It also features cloud delivery of content. The company is engaged in discussions with Amazon and hopes to offer downloads to Kindle devices in the future

If your library is looking to purchase reference ebooks or scholarly content, there are several possibilities. You may purchase using an aggregator (a vendor that sells titles from multiple publishers on a single platform), by going direct to the publisher on the publisher’s platform, or through a distributor (a vendor that sells print and ­ebooks from multiple publishers and/or aggregators).

Major U.S. ebook aggregators and distributors include Books24x7, EBL (Ebook Library), eBooks on EBSCOhost, ProQuest-owned ebrary, Follett ­eBooks, Ingram’s MyiLibrary, Knovel, Sarafi Books Online, and for reference materials, Credo Reference and Gale Virtual Reference Library. Titles and prices vary by vendor, size of library, and number of simultaneous users. Content from these vendors is designed primarily for online reading. The interfaces are intended to be quite robust, with a suite of features. It is possible to download reference articles, book chapters, or entire titles for offline reading from the majority of these vendors. Policies and procedures will vary.

Evaluating vendors

When purchasing ebooks and other downloadable media, it is crucial to evaluate each vendor. Many libraries have created spreadsheets or matrixes to compare features quickly. Some things that should be compared include content/titles available, format of files, business models and costs, licensing terms (ownership or access), ongoing fees, MARC record availability and cost, download options, printing, interface features, customer support and training, and use data. Several libraries have posted sample evaluation charts online.

Downloading content

Most patrons will want to download library ebooks to a personal reading device. Therefore, it’s imperative that libraries understand file formats, devices, and download procedures. This can be very complicated given the many file formats and ereading devices on the market. Generally, ebooks will be sold to libraries in PDF or EPUB file format. These formats are supported by many reading devices like the Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, iPad, and many reading applications for tablet devices and smartphones. Kindles, on the other hand, use a proprietary format known as AZW. As mentioned earlier, OverDrive is the only library vendor to offer direct downloads to Kindles. The Kindle process is relatively simple and smooth, using a patron’s Amazon account as the delivery source for content once it is checked out from the library.

For most ebook downloads, however, the process involves additional steps. First, patrons must find the title they want by searching the library OPAC, or the digital library site provided by the vendor. Once a title is selected, it must be checked out using one’s library card (there is a growing movement to integrate OPACs and vendor platforms). Titles purchased with unlimited simultaneous use, or those in the public domain, may not require this, as multiple users can access them at the same time.

After the title is checked out, patrons download the file onto a computer or tablet device using software or an application (app). The predominant software for this download is Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). ADE is free but requires a user to register and download the software onto a personal computer. ADE can be used to store, organize, and read content. It can also be used to transfer downloaded titles to an ereading device through the USB port. To complete the transfer, ereading devices must be registered to an ADE account.

The first time a patron downloads a library ebook is always the most complicated, as software must be downloaded and registered. Once these steps are completed, repeating the process becomes, well, less complicated. Many library users (and librarians) may be overwhelmed by the download process and give up. Technical difficulties can occur at any time, and often do. According to the January 2012 issue of LJ ’s Patron Profiles, 23 percent of patrons were unsuccessful in downloading ebooks owing to technological issues.

A helping hand

If you plan to provide downloadable ebooks as a service, you need to offer training and support for your staff. In turn, the staff will need to provide training and support to their patrons.

Libraries across the country are supporting hands-on training sessions, video tutorials, demonstrations, or documentation to patrons. Much of this material is available online, either from public library websites, YouTube, or vendor sites. Many library vendors have extensive training and support programs for their member libraries as well.

The best training, however, is experimentation. Encourage staff to practice downloading ­ebooks to library or personal computers. If your library can afford it, purchase several different ereading devices for the staff. These can be used for hands-on training with both staff or patrons.

Another interesting idea that has been successful at both Douglas County Libraries, CO, and Dayton Metro Libraries is a rebate plan to staff who purchase personal ereading devices. Both organizations worked with their library boards or Friends groups to provide $50 rebates for those purchases. Jamie LaRue, director of Douglas County Libraries, told me last year that, as a result of the rebate program, his staff started having impromptu discussion groups at lunch. They shared tips and techniques with one another and experimented with the various devices.

The bottom line

Determining how much of one’s materials budget to spend on ebooks will vary with each library. In its 2011 Survey of Ebook Penetration, LJ found that public libraries are spending about four percent of their materials budgets on ebooks. This number was up from the 2010 study by two percentage points. When asked about ebook materials budgets in 2016, libraries projected that eight percent of the materials budget will be spent on ­ebooks. As mentioned earlier, be aware of your community’s needs for electronic content and make budget decisions based on those needs. You can always start small with a pilot program and expand if demand grows.

Demand for ebooks in public libraries is present, growing, and not likely to stop anytime soon, and 2015 is just around the corner. If you aren’t on the bus, it’s time to buy your ticket. Just grab a rail and hang on, because it’s going to be a wild ride.