The Top 10 Library Stories of 2013

1. An E-Book Breakthrough?  Compared to previous years, 2013 was a good one for libraries in the e-book realm. Among the year’s highlights, Penguin expanded its library program to full throttle after exiting the library e-book market in late 2011. Hachette opened its e-lending program to include its entire catalog. And the final two major holdouts, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan both got in the library e-book game with pilot programs in 2013—and by year’s end Macmillan had expanded its program to cover its entire list. With more consumers now owning e-readers or tablets, e-book borrowing from libraries showed significant growth. In December, 2013, leading vendor OverDrive reported that six library systems each recorded over 1 million e-book lends in 2013, a milestone for sure. And, this, despite many patrons still unaware that their libraries even offer e-book lending. On the vendor side, competition has also heated up. Though OverDrive remains the dominant vendor managing library e-book lending, a number of competitors have made serious headway in the market, including 3M, Baker & Taylor, Recorded Books, and Library Ideas’ Freading. ProQuest, meanwhile, has fully integrated its acquisition of ebrary into its portfolio, EBSCO has integrated its purchase of pioneer e-book service netLibrary, and Ingram is expanding its platform, MyiLibrary.  Perhaps the biggest challenge in 2014, however, is for librarians not to be lulled into a sense of complacency. While there has been progress between librarians and publishers after a period of rising tensions, the library e-book market remains in its infancy. And, as PW columnist Michael Kelley noted in a recent Check It Out! column, despite modest progress, many librarians find the current e-book model to bevirtually untenable over the long haul.  For consumers, accessing library e-books remains a cumbersome process. And for librarians and consumers alike, managing all the different vendors and plug-ins is complicated. E-book costs also remain too high, librarians say, with some publishers charging as much as three times the print cost for a licensed digital edition. Officials at the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Ohio note for example that the library paid $28,730 for its 338 digital copies of Dan Brown’s The Inferno—that’s $85 a copy. And what about the rise of self-published materials? Where is the libraries role there?  The ALA Digital Content Working Group remains hard at work on these and other e-book issues, and certainly some of the progress over the last two years can be traced to their engagement with commercial publishers. But as more and more book readers become e-book readers, a reckoning draws ever closer for libraries ..." [Use the link to access the complete list.]