Carmi Parker's Macmillan Boycott Update 12/20/2019

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Carmi Parker, ILS Administrator for Whatcom County Library System, continues the advocacy:

“Ten more systems came to our attention this week, so there are now 74 library systems and consortia suspending the purchase Macmillan’ eBooks. These represent 1,144 library locations in 26 states, and serve over 46 million U.S. residents, approximately 14% of the total population.”

The most recent systems, with uses, are as follows:

Connecticut State Library 3,537,000

South Carolina State Library 5,084,000

Handley Regional Library System (Winchester, VA) 131,000

Chesapeake Public Library (Chesapeake, VA) 250,000

James L. Hamner Public Library (Amelia County, VA) 12,900

Massanutten Regional Library 158,000

San Diego Public Library 1,426,000

Santa Cruz Public Libraries 214,000

The Public Library of Brookline 359,000

North Carolina Digital Library 3,368,000

See the full list here.

“Data from Indianapolis: Indianapolis Public Library was one of the top 30 libraries by eSpending in 2017. It details some of the trends it has seen in the last several years in this article in the Indiana Business Journal, with illustrative charts.

Indianapolis Public Library is responding to publisher restrictions by adjusting “its default lending period for e-books and e-audiobooks, from 21 days to 14 days, and it’s lowered the limits on how many e-materials patrons can check out and put on hold.”

Note: my consortium considered changing our checkout maximum to 14 days, but found that almost half of our patrons manually switch from the 14 day default to 21.

Embargoed Tor titles: where are they now? In an effort to understand better the impact of embargoes, several libraries in U.S. and Canada are contributing data to an analysis of Tor purchases and circulation before and after the 2018 “experiment”. Stay tuned for results in early – mid January, and many thanks to our cheerful contributors thus far:

  • eLibraryNJ

  • Maryland’s Digital Library

  • Sacramento Public Library

  • San Antonio Public Library

  • Seattle Public Library

  • Toronto Public Library

  • Washington Digital Library Consortium”

Thanks for your continued work, Carmi! If RF had a “Person of the Year” Award, you’d share it with Alan Inouye.