Will the Houghton/HarperCollins Deal Be a Bust for Libraries?

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is divesting its trade division and HarperCollins is acquiring it.

This deal could be bad news for library digital content.

The issue is differences between the two publisher on license terms.

HMH has been licensing ebooks and digital audiobooks under a one copy/one user perpetual access license. None of the Big 5 currently offers that long-term option. HarperCollins at least uses a circ-based metered model, and not the “exploding” time bound licensed, and we are grateful for that. Will HC offer the classic titles it is getting (including Tolkien, Orwell, Lowry, and Atwood) under the HCH terms, or will it flip them to its current metered option, under which titles expire after a certain number of uses? Worse, will HarperCollins have the right to nullify previous license agreements and require relicensing ?

We could be looking at having to spend a lot of time and money relicensing old favorites. Hope everyone has stocked up under the old HMH terms! HRM, maybe it’s time for Going-Out-Of-Business Sale to benefit your customers?

Even newer titles in HMH often have favorable price terms for libraries, often at or even below hardcover print price for perpetual access. If HC uses its current licensing/cost model for the titles it is gaining and raises the prices on future releases by authors, the financial impact could be significant.

With digital audiobooks, both HRM and HC offer a perpetual access license, so the impact may be less. Overall, however, HMM prices have generally been less than HC's by some 14% or so.

Digital library collections could become poorer in the number of titles offered and in selection, with mid-tier, new, and more diverse becoming more expensive and less sustainable. HarperCollins, to be fair, has some of the more reasonable pricing, at least among the Big 5. Maybe it won’t be too bad. It would be worse if HC used time-bound licenses—thanks for not doing that, HC!

So, HarperCollins, yes, we prefer your circ-bound licenses to those of the other Big 5 publishers. Would now be a good time to adopt flexible models, keeping some perpetual access terms in addition to continuing to offer metered models? You could charge a higher price for perpetual access while allowing libraries the option of a less expensive metered option to meet immediate demand.

We hope at any rate that all past licenses will remain valid.

DPLA Community/Open Board Meeting Looks Interesting

Some thoughtful library leaders will be on a panel at the quarterly DPLA Community and Open Board Meeting on April 9, 2 pm Eastern Time. Register here.

“With expanded vaccine access, many of us have begun to conceive of what our post-Covid worlds might look like. These visions are necessarily colored by all that we have learned during the last year—from the benefits of flexible working arrangements to the urgent need to finally dismantle systemic racism in our work. We’ll be joined by:

• Timothy Cherubini, executive director of COSLA (Chief Officers of State Library Agencies)

• Crosby Kemper, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services

• Mary Lee Kennedy, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries

• Rachel Vagts, president of the Society of American Archivists

We’ll talk about the opportunities they see for positive change and growth in the coming year, as well as give an update on what’s next for DPLA.”

The ALA Urges Action

The ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Team has requested action to fund libraries:

“As early as next week, President Biden is expected to submit an outline of his proposed budget spending requests for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, which includes federal funding amounts for libraries. We need your help starting NOW until the final budget is signed in order to ensure that libraries are fully funded in the next fiscal year.

Today, ALA has launched our annual FY2022 #FundLibraries Campaign, and we encourage you to bookmark this page and browse the provided resources that can be shared amongst your library community. Included is the one-page introduction to federal library funding, state-by-state library factsheets to share with your elected officials, and a handy visual guide on the overall federal appropriations process.

Because things are a bit different this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Dear Appropriator letters have begun circulating this week in both the House and Senate, a few weeks later than in previous years. These letters are circulated to all Members of Congress by library champions in the House and Senate to rally colleagues in support of library funding before the appropriations budget is negotiated. The FY2022 budget will include the designated amounts that the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) will be able to grant to libraries through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), along with the Innovative Approaches to Literacy (IAL) grant program through the U.S. Department of Education, which supports school libraries and other literacy-related organizations. For FY2022, we are asking congressional appropriators to include funding of at least $206 million for LSTA and $50 million for IAL. 

Will you contact your members of Congress and ask them to sign onto the Dear Appropriator letters?

Take Action Now

We also encourage you to start the momentum on social media and urge your elected officials to support strong funding for libraries. On ALA's #FundLibraries Campaign page, we have included downloadable graphics for you to use with your posts to better increase their overall visibility. Here is a sample tweet that you can customize and share:

The past year has shown how important libraries are for community success and recovery. @[your members of Congress], please #FundLibraries and ensure that no community has to go without library services.

Thank you so much for your continued advocacy, and we look forward to working with you this year to ensure that libraries are fully funded in FY2022!”

RF encourages library stakeholders to join in this effort!

Carmi Parker: "Equitable Access is the Future for All of Us"

Carmi Parker, ILS Administrator for Whatcom County Library System (disclosure: also RF Working Group Member) has written a post for the Library Futures, a group dedicated to taking “control of our digital futures.”

The piece is very much worth a read, and I encourage anyone interested in library digital content to do so. After reviewing some recent changes in licensing and some publishers refusal to license to libraries at all, the deleterious effect this as upon readers and publishers, the recent Panorama project study on “avid engagers,” and some suggestions for models and pricing that might prove beneficial for authors, publishers, and libraries, Ms. Parker asks three questions in need of answering:

• Why is eLending growing?

• How do less- or more-restrictive access models impact authors’ discoverability and sales over time?

• How might eBooks and eAudiobooks help create audiences and careers for the 21st century authors of color whose voices will enrich our communities?

She concludes powerfully, “One of Library Futures principles states that equitable access is the future of libraries. But I will go further: equitable access is the future for publishers too, the future for all of us.”

Ms. Parker makes some interesting suggestions for how to make it so. We hope for dialogue between stakeholders to makeit happen.

An Update on Maryland's Digital Content Legislation

Andrew Albanese of PW recently updated on the progress of Maryland’s library digital content legislation, requiring “a publisher who offers to license an electronic literary product to the public to also offer to license the product to public libraries in the State on reasonable terms that would enable public libraries to provide library users with access to the electronic literary product.”

This article has several quotes from me, but is nevertheless worth a read. :-)

For now, I’d just like to reiterate that we in Maryland libraries don’t view this legislation as being somehow “against” any publisher. We’d like access to content on reasonable terms. Certainly a librarian’s and a publisher’s definition of “reasonable” might differ. We hope for fruitful negotiations.

The separate Senate and House bills have passed in their respective chambers. By “electronic literary product,” it should be noted, the primary intent is ebooks and digital audiobooks. Libraries face gaps in access to streaming video and other media, but we’re starting with the basics. The bills now must be to be reconciled (so the verbiage is unified) and sent to Governor Hogan. We hope Governor Hogan will sign the bill. We plan a celebration if the bill does pass, thanking our legislators for their strong support of Maryland readers.

So, if it does pass, some big questions. What is “reasonable”? RF has often suggested that a variety of models are necessary, including a perpetual option at a premium price and a metered (by circ, NOT time) model. The idea is to allow for long-term use (and to avoid having to relicense every title) while meeting high initial demand. Of course, price is the real issue: at the right price, any old model will work. If we paid $0.25 a circ, in public libraries at least, the other terms would generally be unimportant. The publishers I’ve spoken with are not keen on the perpetual access model, but it is the most popular in the survey of librarians we took a while back, hence the need to offer more for it. So, how about $30 to $45 (depending on the title) for (say) a 40 circ license and $75 to $100 for a perpetual license? Perhaps no publisher will agree with the former, but this pricing would offer a better return than they get on print titles (which might well last longer than 40 circs and for which we often pay nearly half cover price). Perhaps most librarians would balk at this cost for a perpetual access license. So, get one or two of perpetual on very popular titles, and know that you’ll not have to license that title again in two years and all your long running popular series will not have gaps. Meanwhile, if you have the funding, stock up on the metered licenses as well to meet immediate demand.

We could get very complicated. How about tiered pricing? All libraries are not created equal, so give a price break to qualifying small/rural/underfunded libraries. How about a subscription? I pay, say, $10,000 a year and a publisher lets me have up to 10,000 hits on a catalog. Royalties complicate everything, and library vendors will have to make their sites more robust to handle multiple models at point of licensing. Ownership and circulating titles in a “pretend it’s print” fashion (under copyright, not licensing) would be wonderful, but will we get that with most publishers? The two basic models (perpetual/metered) would at least be a start. Please share your thoughts on what might work!

So, let’s all talk and let’s all listen. If Amazon (and Audible and Blackstone) lead the way, not because of any legislation, but because they think they can work with libraries profitably, excellent. Maybe others will follow.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that for now at least it wouldn’t be nice to see other states (and maybe even the county) work on legislation like Maryland’s. Rhode Island seems poised to to lead. Legislators, who often support libraries, are standing by.

Washington Post's Geoffrey Fowler on Amazon and Libraries

In “Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you,” Geoffrey Fowler ranges far to investigate this important library (and reader!) issue. The piece is well-worth a read (disclosure: I’m quoted in it).

I’d like to add two updates.

The first is that the Maryland legislation requiring publishers that license ebooks and digital audiobooks to consumers also license to libraries under reasonable terms has now passed both House and Senate unanimously. A big thanks to Maryland legislators for their support of Maryland library readers!

Second, as noted previously on RF and elsewhere, and in the aryticle itself, Amazon and DPLA are in negotiations to provide “exclusive” content to libraries through the DPLA Exchange and SimplyE. My understanding is that these negotiations are ongoing and fruitful. Perhaps the negotiations will conclude successfully. If so, and if Amazon adopts some of DPLA’s licensing offerings, featuring multiple options at point of purchase, then Amazon will leapfrog from pariah over some other big publishers to become “Good Friend” of libraries and set a good example for other large publishers to follow. In libraries, at least, we won’t have Amazon to kick around anymore.

Perhaps I’m being too optimistic. But as effective action and vaccinations begin to push back the pandemic in places that are being responsible, hope is becoming somewhat easier. There would still be much to work on to make digital content truly effective and sustainable in libraries, but Amazon delivering would be a good step. It is much to hope for, but hope we in libraries may. Amazon, don’t go breaking our hearts!

Urge your Senators to Build America’s Libraries!

The ALA as shared the following message:

We believe that every community in America deserves great libraries. That includes great librarians and library workers, great collections and programs, and great equipment, library buildings, and bookmobiles.

Library facilities are an essential part of our nation’s civic infrastructure. But for too long, this has unfortunately been overlooked by Congress. The Build America’s Libraries Act would provide historic funding to improve our nation’s libraries.

Introduced on January 28, the Build America’s Libraries Act (S. 127) would provide $5 billion in funding to repair, modernize, and construct library facilities in underserved and marginalized communities. Yes, you read that right – $5 billion with a B!

We love America’s library facilities, but we know that the current lack of federal funding is a barrier to enabling the programs and services our communities need. Most library buildings are decades old, including nearly 800 of the original Carnegie libraries which are still in use today. They face many modern challenges, such as adapting ventilation for the COVID-19 pandemic, preparing for natural disasters and extreme weather, and meeting current connectivity and accessibility standards to ensure service to all members of the community.

Federal funding for library buildings has not been provided in more than 20 years. But as the nation works with this new Congress to recover from a historic pandemic and reckon with the legacy of racial injustice, now is the time to think big. The Build America’s Libraries Act would prioritize funding to communities with high poverty rates, as part of a strategy to begin to reverse decades of underinvestment in communities of color.

Go here to support this legislation

Columbia University Joins Library Simplified

Columbia University has become the first academic library to deploy the Library Simplified (SimplyE) app.

A post comments as follows:

A limited number of ebooks available from our collections are available now; more will be added on an ongoing basis. 

The best way to see which ebooks are currently available is to download the SimplyE app and add Columbia University Libraries. Users can also click the “Read on SimplyE” link for available titles in a CLIO record. For more help on using SimplyE, see our guide. 

Millions of items from our collections are already accessible online through CLIO, including 40% of our print holdings that are temporarily available digitally due to COVID-19. With SimplyE, even more books are available in a streamlined digital format, though they will also continue to remain available in other formats through publishers.

RF congratulates Columbia for being the first to adopt the “One App to Rule Them All” and hopes the student and faculty experience will be enhanced by having one place to see most content.

Andrew Albanese on Current Library Digital Content Ecosystem

In “OverDrive CEO: Publishers, Librarians Still Searching for Fair E-book Lending Models,” PW’s Andrew Albanese reviews OverDrive CEO Steve Potash’s blog post on the company’s advocacy for new license models. The piece becomes a wider look at the current state of library digital content and some developments that will shape our practice in the future, including the start of Library Futures and its advocacy for greater library digital content access, Fight for the Future’s Who Can Get Your Book campaign aimed at expending equity and access, Amazon talking with DPLA about sharing its exclusive content, and the publisher lawsuit against the Internet Archive’s Open Library. The piece is well-worth a read. It does contain a quote from yours truly, but look at it anyway.

It is certainly sharping up to be another interesting year. RF is pleased that new groups are joining it in advocacy for enhanced library digital content but concerned that our efforts not get fragmented. We encourage all the stake-holders to work together as much as possible so that efforts are coordinated rather than duplicated. It’s a lot to keep up with. We at RF will try to keep readers informed as events transpire.

In the meantime, as we have commented on some of these issues before, here is our summary:

Amazon talking with DPLA: if Amazon adopts DPLA’s models that allow for options at point-of-license, and thereby sets an example for other large publishers, this development could be even more important than the sharing of content though even the sharing is alone is important. Amazon, please also find a way to work with libraries internationally!

Publisher Lawsuit against the Internet Archive: Drop it and negotiate. Librarians, Controlled Digital Lending is worth having, and voicing support for the IA is good.

The IA: Saving "Last Chance" Books

The Internet Archive has posted about saving “last chance” books—so worn or damaged that only digitization gives them an opportunity to continue telling their story.

“Sometimes they arrive tied up in string because their binding is broken. Others are in envelopes to protect the brittle pages from further damage.

Aging books are sent from libraries to the Internet Archive for preservation. Thanks to the careful work of the nearly 70 people who scan at digitization centers in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, the books get a second life with a new audience.

Scanners sometimes call these “Last Chance Books” and they take pride in restoring them. As they turn the pages one at time to be photographed and digitized, they develop a daily cadence—but it must be adjusted with fragile materials.”

Learn much more in this interesting blog post.