John Palfrey’s TEDx talk on the Digital Public Library of America
Posted: 14 Nov 2012 Filed under: Digital Public Library of American, eBooks, eContent, Education, eReaders, Frictioned eBooks, Google, Internet, Libraries, Technology | Tags: Digital Libraries, Digital Public Library of America, DPLA, Ebooks, eContent, Internet, Libraries, Wellness Leave a comment »John Palfrey recently gave a short TEDx talk about his work with the DPLA. It’s a good introduction to the project and why it is needed.
More info at DPLA
“Frictioned” eBooks
Posted: 30 Sep 2012 Filed under: Books, Digital Rights Management, DRM, eBooks, eContent, eReaders, Frictioned eBooks, Internet, Libraries, Publishing | Tags: DRM, Ebooks, eContent, eReaders, Libraries, Publishing Leave a comment »Need a concrete example of how publishers are “inserting friction” in order to make it difficult for libraries to share eBooks? Just look at the price difference.
Full version of above picture from American Libraries Magazine (pdf)
Ursula K. Le Guin says this of “frictioned” eBooks in libraries:
If the part libraries play in distributing ebooks gets “frictioned” into insignificance, it will be easier for the corporations to take further control of what ebooks you personally can obtain, how long a book will stay on your reader before you have to pay for it again, and whatever else they want to control. If they see profit in doing any of this, they’ll do it. If small publishers try to sell the books they don’t sell, the big corporations will eliminate the small publishers.
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We’d be wise to keep our information base as broad as possible, by supporting the existing public libraries in their heroic and amazingly successful effort to carry on their job in the electronic age.
The goal of the public library has been to give anyone who needs or wants it permanent, unlimited, free access to books. All books.
The goal of the public library in the electronic age is what it always was: to give permanent, unlimited, free access to books — print books, ebooks, all books — to everyone.
Cory Doctorow on libraries, e-books and DRM
Posted: 24 Jul 2012 Filed under: Books, Cory Doctorow, Digital Rights Management, DRM, eBooks, eContent, eReaders, Libraries, Technology | Tags: Books, Cory Doctorow, Digital Rights Management, DRM, Ebooks, eContent, eReaders, Libraries, Technolgoy Leave a comment »Cory Doctorow’s recent talk at the EBLIDA-NAPLE 20th annual conference in Copenhagen is worth spending 14 minutes on. He addresses the issues that librarians should be thinking about in regards to the future of e-books in our libraries. The first 13 minutes lead up nicely to his final plea to librarians (emphasis mine).
It is a feature and not a bug of ebooks that two people can read them at the same time…We are the people of the book and it’s time to start acting like it.
In conclusion, I have a simple but radical proposal for you. Stop buying ebooks with DRM on it. Period. I know it’s not easy, librarianship is not easy, librarianship has never been easy – ask the people at Alexandria. You are, after all, the specialists who safeguard information in the information age. Access to information has always been a radical political act. But you wouldn’t accept a publishers demand that its representatives be allowed to put hidden cameras in your collection to discover who was reading which books. You wouldn’t accept a publishers demand for access to your circulation records. You wouldn’t accept a journal publisher who said that your physical copies had to be confiscated and burned if you terminated your subscriptions. The digital equivalents are no more acceptable than the physical ones.
