From the press release:

NetGalley today announced the official launch of a new member benefit program for librarians, in partnership with the American Library Association (ALA). ALA members who sign up to request digital galleys from NetGalley can now add their ALA member number to their profile, to speed request approval and access to upcoming titles. NetGalley’s catalog currently includes new titles from over 140 publishers, and galleys can be read securely on all major reading devices and tablets.

NetGalley also announced the launch of a new online, email and social media program, NetGalley at the Library, where publishers can highlight upcoming titles or library promotions to NetGalley members.

In preparation for this announcement, NetGalley is conducting a survey about librarian reading habits and use of digital devices for reading and recommending. Over 1,000 librarians have already shared their views, and early results indicate that librarians are indeed digital readers (over 85% of survey respondents indicate that they read digitally). The survey will remain open until the end of ALA Midwinter [click http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nonNGlib to take the survey], with results published in early February.

Susan Ruszala, President of NetGalley, commented, “NetGalley has always been a huge supporter of libraries. It is our belief that in allowing NetGalley members to display their ALA credentials, ALA members will receive approvals for new titles faster and more frequently. In addition, this partnership will introduce more ALA members to NetGalley as a free resource for gaining early digital access to upcoming titles from participating publishers.”

“The American Library Association is pleased to work with NetGalley to offer this new benefit for ALA members,” Cathleen Bourdon, Associate Executive Director for Communications and Member Relations stated. “This program will help our 57,000 members use digital galleys to preview more upcoming titles, and make more informed purchasing decisions for their collections.”

Over 7,000 librarians are already members of the NetGalley community. In total, there are currently over 47,000 professional readers (reviewers, media, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, and educators) registered at NetGalley.

Yesterday ALA announced a new blog on E-content, to be administered by Christopher Harris.  Here is more information from the press release:

Keeping up with the many varieties of digital content—and how libraries can offer them to their patrons—just got easier. American Libraries has launched an “E-Content” blog (http://americanlibraries.org/e-content) that provides information on e-books, e-readers, e-journals, databases, digital libraries, digital repositories, and other e-content issues. The blog complements the new section on e-content that appears in the weekly e-newsletter American Libraries Direct and focuses on similar issues.

E-Content is administered by Christopher Harris, director of the School Library System for the Genesee Valley Educational Partnership in New York State. Harris was selected because of his engaged expertise in many things digital. A participant in the first ALA Emerging Leaders program in 2007, Harris was subsequently honored as a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2008. He is coauthor of Libraries Got Game, published by ALA Editions in 2010, and is a regular contributor to School Library Journal.

The E-Content blog will help disseminate the work of the new ALA Working Group on Digital Content and Libraries, which is currently being formed to proactively address digital content opportunities and issues from both policy and practical perspectives. This Association-wide group of experts, selected by ALA President Molly Raphael, will broadly represent the many constituencies within the library community. The working group’s charge reflects a priority of the ALA 2015 Strategic Plan, supporting the “transformation” of libraries.

Via No Shelf Required

You can find the original here.

Restrictions on library e-book lending threaten access to information

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From the ALA District Dispatch (blockquotes omitted):

Recent action from the publishing world in the e-book marketplace has re-ignited interest and sparked many questions from librarians, publishers, vendors, and readers. Two ALA member task forces – the presidential task force on Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) and the E-book Task Force – were recently created to address these complex and evolving issues.  EQUACC met this week in Washington, D.C., to provide ALA with guidance and recommendations for a coordinated ALA response to the challenging issues.

In light of recent publisher changes affecting libraries’ ability to provide e-books to the public (e.g., restricting lending of e-books to a limited number of circulations) and the refusal of some publishers to sell e-content to libraries entirely, the task force will:

• Work to establish meetings between ALA leadership and publisher and author associations to discuss model lending and purchase options for libraries.
• Establish mechanisms for interactive and ongoing communication for ALA members to voice concerns and pose questions to ALA leadership.
• Establish communication and solicit input with other ALA member divisions and units, including the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

In addition to the above, the task force recommends that ALA pursue the following:

• Conduct an environmental scan to understand the current landscape and project future scenarios.
• Work with appropriate partners within and outside of ALA to improve access to electronic information for all, with a particular focus on people with disabilities.
• Identify and support new and emerging model projects for delivering e-content to the public.
• Develop a national public relations and education campaign highlighting the importance of libraries as essential access points for electronic content.

ALA members and the public can communicate with ALA on these issues through a new website dedicated to the challenges and potential solutions in libraries for improved access to electronic content.  This site will be live within 10 days, and the URL to be announced at launch. These efforts reflect on libraries’ long-standing principles on equitable access to information, reader privacy, intellectual freedom, and the lawful right of libraries to purchase and lend materials to the public.

ALA calls upon all stakeholders to join us in crafting 21^st century solutions that will ensure equitable access to information for all.

The panel focused on the opportunities and challenges e-books offered libraries. Kahle in particular was outspoken about the need to prevent an oligarchy of a few powerful corporations from taking control of digital media for the future.

[Kahle] expressed his longstanding concern over Google’s efforts to scan collections “and sell it back to us,” and urged libraries not to give up their traditional roles. “What libraries do is buy stuff, and lend it out,” he said, suggesting that libraries “digitize what we have to, and buy what we can,” but not to let the promise of licensed access turn libraries into agents for a few major corporations. “We do so at our peril.” He also urged more dialogue with publishers and vendors about the future of digital content and the role of libraries—but he also urged bold action.

He also touched on the Open Library partnership with the Boston Public Library, involving scanning and lending in-copyright books, claiming there has been “nary a peep” from publishers wary of infringement, nor has the Internet Archive come in for legal trouble over its practice of copying and preserving web sites. He suggested it was because copyright owners recognized the non-profit, culturally-important nature of these projects. “We’re just doing what libraries do.”

Sometimes we forget that the e-book revolution is as challenging to libraries as to publishers—possibly more so. Certainly the rise of the e-book is going to bring a lot of changes to these cultural institutions. But as an earlier story today also noted, librarians are putting a lot of thought into how to adapt to these changes.

(Found via archive.org, which also has video and HD video of the panel discussion available.)

Q: Why doesn’t Amazon support the popular "e-pub" standard used by your competitors and many libraries?

A: We are innovating so rapidly that having our own standard allows us to incorporate new things at a very rapid rate. For example: Whispersync (which uses wireless connections to sync your place in a book across devices) and changing font sizes.

Other standards over time may incorporate some of these things. But we’re moving very quickly to improve the state of the art. It’s very helpful not to have to wait for some third-party standard to catch up.

Chris Meadows nicely shot that one down. So ePub at one point would not even allow font-size changes? Come on, Jeff. From afar I love the better traits of the new Reader and may buy one myself, and I recognize that the Amazon has its share of positives. Respect for e-book standards just isn’t one of them.

In fairness to Jeff, I’m also grouchy toward the International Digital Publishing Forum, the creator and developer of ePub. He is right about the group’s inadequacies. Two years ago and probably earlier, I myself wrote on the sync issue, suggesting that the IDPF come up with an industry standard (since we’re not talking about format matters per se, I’d have been happy simply IDPF simply recognizing others’ efforts in this area).  No such luck. Whatever the reason, the IDPF has been too bleepin’ snailish in the past. I hope that changes, and in fact there are signs it might.

Regardless of Jeff’s monopolistic aspirations and the IDPF’s past slugishness, we need standards for the entire e-book industry to make e-books a truly durable medium; and rich corporations like Amazon and Adobe should be willing to help pay for the technical capabilities for the IDPF to keep up. Yes, Jeff: you should be in the IDPF, just as Google and Apple already are. You’re a freeloader if you’re not. Your dissing of Mobipocket format books—on which some hapless buyers spent hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars for proprietary-DRMed editions they can’t enjoy on their iPads—shows how trustworthy you are on format matters. Mobipocket the company was once in the IDPF. But it isn’t now. Corporate pressure, now that Amazon owns it?

Meanwhile I’d suggest that the library world and other large buyers and potential buyers of e-books lay down the law for Jeff. “ePub when possible, or we won’t give you business. We’ll buy Kindles in small quantities or on our own to see what you’re up to. But no large institutional buys of Kindles or books in that format.” Hello, American Library Association? How much do you care about open standards? I’m going to send this post to an ALA tech expert and find out what the group is  up to. Any chance ALA can come up with formal collection development guidelines that position ePub as the preferred format for books that don’t have special requirements which the standard format can’t meet? Luckily, ALA’s Office of Information and Technology Policy is an IDPF member; but that should be just the start. I want action.