The excited, early-adopting techie in
me loves the idea, while the open-access,
liberal-thinking idealist hates the limitations and prices that the current
models place on libraries and users.
The recent tension between
librarians, the American Library Association, and Publishers has made me feel
like librarians may need to rally together to describe what we think is a fair and
reasonable price.
I agree with ANNOYED LIBRARIAN that
3 times the price of a print book for an ebook allowing access to three
simultaneous users seems a fair and reasonable price for a library to pay for
an item. Would the library then have access to this item indefinitely, though? That
would seem fair.
Current models for ebook packages
allow the vendor or publisher to cancel the availability of any individual item
in the collection purchased, without notifying the purchasing library. This is
like a bookseller coming back three years after selling you a book and stealing
it from your collection. The catalogue record remains, but when a library
patron goes to look for it, it’s missing.
I am particularly frustrated with
ebooks that cannot be read by text to speech software. Digital items should
increase accessibility, not decrease it!
What is with vendors/publishers charging
more than twice the print price for a single concurrent user?!
