Posts Tagged ‘ Libraries ’

Working with eBooks? Please Take this Pew Survey

May 2, 2012
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Working with eBooks? Please Take this Pew Survey

Actually there are two surveys – one for those working in libraries and one for patrons. If you work in a library and work with ebooks please take a few minutes to take the first survey. Please share the second survey with your patrons. The surveys will be live April 16 through May 18. The survey’s are part of a the research Pew is conducting on the role of libraries in the digital age (disclaimer: I serve on the Library Advisory Board). The next report will be available this summer (the first one was released in April). Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, will provide an update on the Pew library research on Sunday, June 24, at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. Survey One This survey is targeted at librarians and other people who work at public libraries that lend e-books. We would like your input; please take the survey, it takes about 15 minutes.  It is available here: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/participate/survey/e-book-lenders Login: your prefered email address Password: please email  Kathryn Zuckuhr  (kzickuhr AT pewinternet.org) for the password with Pew Library Password as the subject. If you prefer you may also email me for the password.(bobbi.newman AT gmail.com) Survey

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Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business?

March 7, 2012
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Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business?

Or get out at least until there is a better system? I know what you are going to say, I can hear it already – “We can’t! Our patrons demand ebooks!” Except the truth is our patrons want a lot of things we can’t give them – to always be first on the waiting list for the new James Patterson, to not pay fines when their books are late, for the library to be open earlier or later, or to have a system besides Dewey because despite using it their entire lives they still cannot figure it out. When it comes to ebooks, we cannot give them what they want, not really, we cannot give them books from Simon and Schuster or MacMillian or new books from Penguin or Hatchet, and not more than 26 times from HarperCollins, and probably not many books from Random House. What we can do, what maybe we should do, is spend their tax money wisely, and I am no longer convinced that spending it on the current ebook system is a wise move. The Demand: First let’s look at the demand. As librarians we spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about books and subsequently ebooks. But

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Random House eBook Price Hike Round Up

March 2, 2012
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Normally I would be all fired up and writing a post of my own on this, but right now I just feel defeated. So here’s the break down. What Random House said Titles available in print as new hardcovers: $65- $85 Titles available for several months, or generally timed to paperback release: $25-$50 New children’s titles available in print as hardcovers: $35-$85 Older children’s titles and children’s paperbacks: $25-$45 What it looked like in reality (new prices went into effect on Thursday) Eisenhower in War and Peace $40 Wednesday, $120 on Thursday (print version a little over $20 (it retails at $40). Blessings by Anna Quindlen – $15 on Wednesday, $45 on Thursday Read More: The impact of Random House price increases  (added 3/6/2012) Random House’s eBook Price Hikes are GOOD for Libraries. IF… (added 3/6/2012) Rich Books, Poor Society: Random House’s Price Spike (added 3/5/2012) Random House drastically raises the price of e-books for libraries (added 3/5/2012) Necessary Evil? Random House Triples Prices Of Library E-Books (added 3/3/2012) Profits Surge at Random House  (added 3/3/2012) Your ebook rent just went up 300% ALA calls on Random House to reconsider major ebook price increase Librarians Feel Sticker Shock as Price for Random House Ebooks Rises as Much as 300

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Mea Culpa on Penguin and Libraries and An Alternative to OverDrive

February 11, 2012
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Mea Culpa on Penguin and Libraries and An Alternative to OverDrive

I feel I need to make a clarification on yesterday’s post title How to Talk to Your Patrons About Penguin & Other Publishers Not Loaning eBooks to Libraries - Penguin did NOT stop doing business with libraries. They stopped doing business with OverDrive. As Publisher’s Lunch Points out: As we have reported multiple times, but does not seem to have seeped out into general reports or public consciousness, multiple publishers have told us that Overdrive’s implementation of their Kindle library lending–in which library patrons are sent to a commercial, third-party retailer, in this case Amazon–is in their view a direct violation of Overdrive’s contracts. Remember that in November, Penguin said clearly it “informed suppliers to libraries that it expected them to abide by existing agreements to offer older digital titles to libraries only if those files were held behind the firewalls of the suppliers.” Not the firewalls of retailers. Also in November, Penguin said it had “subsequently been informed by Amazon that it had not been consulted by Overdrive about the terms of Penguin’s agreement with Overdrive,” which, you can reasonably infer, does not allow Kindle lending the way Overdrive was executing it. It just so happens that OverDrive is the

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eBook Link Round Up from Internet Librarian #il2011

October 24, 2011
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eBook Link Round Up from Internet Librarian #il2011

During the two day ebook track in at Internet Librarian there were a lot of references to articles, reports and books, by myself, and others so I thought I would put together a link round up. Content by Cory Docotrow Seriously read this. It’s free to download in the format of your choice and it will help you understand DRM better than anything else. E-book piracy may have unexpected benefits for publishers O’Leary makes the distinction between the instances of e-book piracy (the number of pirated e-book files available for download) and the impact of e-book piracy (the actual effect on the business of publishing). For O’Leary, the two are related, but different. He says that one way to measure impact is to pick a book, wait for it to be pirated, and then compare sales before and after. E-reader ownership doubles in six months The percent of U.S. adults with an e-book reader doubled from 6% to 12% between November 2010 and May 2011 Across the digital divide. Let’s talk about poverty. …every time a discussion of ebooks turns, seemingly inevitably, to “Print is dead, traditional publishing is dead, all smart authors should be bailing to the brave new

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photo by Beth Tribe

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