ALA President Maureen Sullivan Sends Open Letter to Publishers Re: Refusal to Sell eBooks To Libraries | LJ INFOdocket
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-09-27
Summary:
"Here’s the Full Text of the Open Letter by ALA President Maureen Sullivan: 'It’s a rare thing in a free market when a customer is refused the ability to buy a company’s product and is told its money is 'no good here.' Surprisingly, after centuries of enthusiastically supporting publishers’ products, libraries find themselves in just that position with purchasing e-books from three of the largest publishers in the world. Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin have been denying access to their e-books for our nation’s 112,000 libraries and roughly 169 million public library users. Let’s be clear on what this means: If our libraries’ digital bookshelves mirrored the New York Times fiction best-seller list, we would be missing half of our collection any given week due to these publishers’ policies. The popular 'Bared to You' and 'The Glass Castle' are not available in libraries because libraries cannot purchase them at any price. Today’s teens also will not find the digital copy of Judy Blume’s seminal 'Forever,' nor today’s blockbuster 'Hunger Games' series...'"