Librarians at the Gate

"E-books are killing the happy marriage of libraries and publishers. Libraries can now lend the same book to thousands of readers simultaneously. Publishers say it’s not fair. What’s the answer?

For the past 100 years, publishers and public libraries have had a cordial, if complicated, relationship. Publishers like libraries because libraries buy books. But then, of course, the libraries allow anyone with a library card to read the books, reducing the likelihood that cardholders will become book buyers. It’s a tradeoff that publishers have been happy with, largely because of the mathematical limitations of library lending. That is, libraries lend one book to one reader for several days, so over the course of a year, even the most popular books might be read by fewer than 50 people.

Now, however, technology has fouled the waters in the form of e-books, which make it possible for a library to lend a single book at one time to, say, everyone in Manhattan. Big publishers, most of whom live in Manhattan, are no longer happy with their relationship with libraries. And they are particularly unhappy with e-publishers....

Now, while Random House is contemplating more legal action, RosettaBooks is selling more than 100 titles in e-book form on its website, www.rosettabooks.com. The e-books can be bought individually by consumers for $8.99, or—and this is the scary part—they can be bought by libraries, to whom RosettaBooks offers unlimited access to classics for as little as $200 a year. Those library, in turn, can offer that e-book for download from its website to as many readers as can fit in the pipeline. That can be a very large number. The University of Virginia, for example, which has the country’s largest collection of digitized books, claims that 5.8 million e-books have been downloaded by users in more than 100 countries.

Until a few months ago, most libraries with e-book databanks have been considerate of publishers’ preferences, and have issued e-books to one reader at a time....

Unless some long-established business models change, library lending to multiple readers could clobber big book publishers, who have been hurting for years." [Darwin Magazine]

Can someone please explain to me why all of a sudden the media has chosen this exact moment to note that digital files can be circulated to more than one patron at a time? This is not new(s). Then please find me a single example of a library doing this, on its own, with copyrighted material. netLibrary, eBrary, Books24x7, Audible, etc. are companies, NOT LIBRARIANS, and these companies impose strict restrictions on simultaneous use. With each one, libraries can let more than one person at a time use a file ONLY IF THEY PAY FOR SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS.

In other words, libraries have to buy multiple copies of digital files if they want to circulate multiple copies of digital files. It's no different than in the print world, thanks to the companies behind these services. I challenge you to find a single library that is circulating copyrighted content to more than one patron at a time without paying for the privilege of doing so.

And by the way, the 5.8 million ebooks downloaded from the University of Virginia - they're all public domain works at their Electronic Text Center, not titles from the library's catalog. It's disappointing to see Darwin fanning the flames of a fire that doesn't need to exist. The author would have had no foundation for this article if he'd bothered to even talk to a librarian.

Shame on him and shame on Darwin for publishing this.