Halperin on Ebooks in Schools and School Libraries

[Disclosure: ReadersFirst is Coalition Partner of Library Futures]

ReadersFirst began with the aim of using technology to improve the library digital content experience; our members’ advocacy of APIs to streamline a cumbersome and frustrating download process resulted in significant beneficial changes. While continued progress in interoperability of publishers/vendors/ILS providers is necessary and would be welcome—particularly in helping acquisitions librarians work across platforms to manage shifting content licenses constantly in need of updating— it is now true that poor technological processes are no longer the main barrier to use of library digital content. That barrier is instead expensive and unfair licensing. Not every publisher is at fault. Many offer terms that are fair to authors, the publishers themselves, and libraries. Others do not. An area of particular imbalance is in schools and school libraries.

A powerful new voice in advocacy, Jennie Rose Halperin, Library Future’s Executive Director, has recently pointed out the salient issues in The Daily Beast with “Publishers Are Using E-books to Extort Schools and Libraries.” She notes that ebooks are far more expensive for schools and profitable for publishers than print.

“So you might think that e-books should be freely available to teachers and students to use in the same ways they’ve long used paper books, and at comparable prices. But they’re not. Instead, many of the biggest publishers are charging schools and libraries top dollar, putting digital books out of reach for tons of kids who need them while putting severe restrictions on how schools can use the books they’re now renting, rather than owning. The draconian terms mean, for example, that a single e-copy of The Diary of Anne Frank can cost a school district as much as $27 per student per year—with the lion’s share of the money going to billion-dollar publishing companies.”

Halperin rightly points out that concerns over avoiding copyright violations already frustrate online learning. She notes that the goal is to undermine the balance that copyright laws attempt to establish between competing rights: the copyright owner and the need for exchange of knowledge in a free and vibrant intellectual marketplace:

“The publishers’ ultimate goal is to turn e-books into assets that libraries and schools can only rent, and never own. The stakes couldn’t be higher. As the debate rages over the legal aspects of owning digital assets, rather than licensing them on terms set by corporations—which is at its core a fight over the right of schools and libraries to provide books for everyone, regardless of income level or zip code—poorer kids and their families are the losers.”

Nobody is saying that publishers and authors do not deserve fair compensation. Libraries of all kinds are dependent upon them. But the expectation that schools and libraries should have to pay for each use as if it were a consumer sale, at the rate that consumers pay, is clearly unsustainable and a disservice to the public weal. RF encourages reading of Halperin’s article and the beginning of legislative action to ensure a fair balance by a thorough-going look at copyright law with revision of the DMCA. In the meantime, we thank those publishers that do offer fair terms so that students may learn and grow.