Andrew Albanese on "A Reset for Library E-books"

“In the wake of the pandemic, can publishers and libraries finally hash out their differences?”

So asks Andrew Albanese of Publishers Weekly in a recent article that is worth a read.

While publishers have provided some new models/prices that have helped libraries provide greater access to ebooks in a time of increased demand, we are left to wonder about the future:

“What happens when the pandemic is behind us? If the library e-book market simply returns to its pre-pandemic state—in which publishers unilaterally raise prices and change terms without negotiation or even consultation—and digital demand remains dramatically higher, as is expected, how will libraries manage? The uneasy feeling shared by many librarians is that the pandemic may have necessarily changed the course of the digital library market during this annus horribilis, but the underlying issues and dysfunction in the market have still not been addressed. And as many libraries begin to reopen their print collections in some form, librarians say that publishers have yet to offer any clue about what the future may hold.

Now is the time for library stakeholders—ALA and its subgroups, ULC, CULC, COSLA—to band together to ask for change not just for the pandemic, but for all time and for all users. We can ask for meetings that create real progress, and, failing that progress, exercise our buying and taste-making power to support publishers that do help. COVID is a catalyst for transformation. The digital future is hear even faster than we thought it might be. Without substantive change of some kind, library ebook collections will remain small and ephemeral and we can slowly (or not so slowly) watch usage decline and our relevance fade.