PRH's Skip Dye Announces Further Extension of the Temporary Open License Program

Penguin Random House’s Senior VP for Library Sales and Digital Strategy Skip Dye emailed RF to say that the publisher is further “extending our temporary open license program. With the uncertainty of what this upcoming school year will bring – either home-learning, in-classroom or a combination of both – and the number of requests to extend our Story Time Temp Permissions have increased over the past few weeks. We quickly decided to announce the extension of the program through the end of 2020. We have updated the webpage and the form to reflect the new extension of Dec 31, 2020.

We have surpassed 25,000 unique requestors. These are from educators, librarians, booksellers, authors and narrators. But, we have had a number of unusual requests: Doctors, Police Captains, Astronauts, Ambassadors, First Ladies, Girl/Boy Scout troops, Fireman, NFL Cheerleaders – all requesting permission to read-aloud PRH titles to their communities. The program has transformed and connected people during this pandemic and I am so pleased that we are extending through the rest of this year.”

The program allows participants to use PRH materials more openly in virtual story times and other programs.”

Thanks to PRH for their help to libraries in during the pandemic.