March 14 story in the NYT
Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost.
The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times.
Boycott Harper-Collins e-books
Interestingly, today’s New York Times article on the boycott of Harper-Collins e-books by libraries omitted two fundamental points:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/media/15libraries.html?_r=1&hp
1. The great profits publishers make by selling e-books.
With e-books, the publishers have eliminated paper, printing, binding, distribution and returns by publishing books electronically–thus decreasing publication costs dramatically. Publishing everything in e-book format was their dream because of such savings–as expressed by Jack Romanos, then head of Simon & Schuster, at an ebooks conference in Washington maybe 10 or so years ago. Not having to share profits with Baker & Taylor, etc. and the few remaining bookstores makes e-books a great product. I don’t know the per cent Overdrive and other e-book firms pay for the right to distribute e-books, but–intuitively, at least–it would net far more money for the Overdrives, given the whole B&T-like apparatus required to fulfill orders for physical books, i.e. selectors & buyers, warehouses and warehousing, & then selling & physically distributing the books. to libraries or its other customers..
2. The first-sale doctrine and what it guarantees for libraries–irrespective of what Harper-Collins wants.
Clearly Harper-Collins wants not only to pocket all of these savings, but to take away something U.S. libraries have enjoyed all along, the benefits of the first-sale doctrine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine). Specifically, the first-sale doctrine means that if a library buys a book, it is free to circulate it as often as it chooses with no per usage charge or royalty or externally imposed limitation. Harper-Collins wants to limit library use to 26 circulations–thus abridging the right of first-sale.
Forgive the cliché, but this is the proverbial camel getting its nose in the tent. There are few things publishers want more than to stop libraries’ unlimited uses of purchased books..
I was disappointed with the librarian who said–in the article’s concluding paragraph–that ultimately some accommodation would have to be made between publishers and libraries.
With all of the ways library funding continues to be cut, it would be tragic if librarians gave even an inch on this first-sale doctrine. Even if the libraries were rolling in dough–a condition in my 46 years as a librarian that has never happened–the principle must be defended.
For those who might not have been working in libraries about a decade ago, it is the same Harper-Collins that would have pulped Michael Moore’s attack on President Bush and his administration, Stupid White Men…. Thanks to Ann Sparanese and the innumerable librarians who at her behest e-mailed Harper-Collins in protest, Harper-Collins reversed its decision. (Incidentally Harper-Collins made a tidy profit on the money paid by the hundreds of librarians that stood in-line to buy one or more copies personally autographed by Moore as well as the hundreds of thousands of other people who bought the book.)
There is no middle ground. As in, the Earth was created in 7 days and is 6,000 years old (http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/05/30/how-old-is-earth) vs. the scientific position that it is over 4 billion years old (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/scientific_age_earth.html), there is no middle ground–people are free to believe what they want, but science has demonstrated the factual basis of the latter claim and the conditions under which it can be verified. There is no splitting the difference.
We must stand rock solid against any proposition that would imperil the libraries’ ownership of the book as guaranteed by the first-sale doctrine. Libraries must defend their right to circulate such books as many times as they wish.
mitch
Maurice J. Freedman, MLS, PhD
Past-President, American Library Association
Publisher, The U*N*A*B*A*S*H*E*D Librarian,
the ‘how I run my library good’ letter
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