New ALA report explores challenges of equitable access to digital content

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-05-24

Summary:

“The American Library Association (ALA) today released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through our nation’s libraries. In the report, titled ‘E-content: The Digital Dialogue,’ authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell e-books to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment our cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered.  ‘Broad information access is essential for communities to compete in the global knowledge economy,’ said ALA President Molly Raphael. ‘As more and more content is delivered digitally, we simply cannot afford to lock down books and lock out readers. This timely supplement addresses the need to protect fair and reasonable library access to digital information.’  The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, explores various licensing models and the state of librarian-publisher relations. Additionally, the report provides an update on the ALA-wide effort to promote access to digital content (co-chaired by Robert Wolven, associate university librarian at Columbia University, and Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library). The effort includes meeting with publishers, distributors and other important stakeholders; championing public advocacy, and writing position papers that advance practical business models without compromising library values... ‘Publishers, distributors and libraries must accept that new models of lending will not look like the old print model,’ writes Robert C. Maier, director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and Carrie Russell, director of the ALA Program on Public Access to Information. ‘We are not just trying to solve a library lending problem, although that is the current emergency...’”

Link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130403122324/http://www.ala.org/news/pr?id=10543

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.policies oa.licensing oa.libass oa.copyright oa.libraries oa.librarians oa.recommendations oa.privacy oa.ala oa.drm oa.libre oa.reports oa.books oa.announcements oa.cdl

Date tagged:

05/24/2012, 17:18

Date published:

05/24/2012, 13:18