librarian tea

Ken Roberts:  argues that it is best to agreement between publishers and vendors.
Buff Hamilton:  K-12 Librarian says she couldn’t justify the cost of OverDrive, since it was really like a rental.  She may not have the funds next year, and no e-books to show for it.
Matt Barnes:  ebrary found that 81% of library patrons preferred e-books.  So the demand is there, but not enough products yet. Cost and ILL restrictions are a real problem for libraries.  eBrary is in talks with OCLC regarding possibility of providing ILL.
Erin Stand — owns company “Book Lamp” http://booklamp.org/
, which breaks down e-text. Said last months “Tools to Change” for publisher last month http://www.toccon.com/toc2012 showed that publishers were scared of what the ebook market is doing.  He said that some of this has gone down, but still very palpable.
He really loves to use the Kindle voice. Finds he can listen when he commutes, then read later.  (reads many, many more books).  Pretty amazed by digital publications.
His site works as a reader’s advisor and work with the book genome project: http://bookgenome.com/

The reason we don’t see as many back lists in e-book form is that publishers are scurrying to get rights to their back and middle list. As soon as they can get these, they put them up as e-books.

CIL 2012 Notes
March 22

Keynote:  Creating innovative libraries
Susan Hildreth, Director of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  Created by Congress 15 years ago.  Competitive and State formula grant programs for libraries and museums.  Analyze trends, share best practices, provide policy advice and partner with other federal agencies.

Focusing now on grants for managing data and metadata.

Sparks!  Ignition Grants — grants that are easier to apply for than major grants.

She says that libraries play a huge role in lifetime learning.  Formal education is rather short in duration, but libraries’ educational influence lasts much longer.

Introduces idea of libraries providing space for DIY and “Makers”.  Repurpose lost shelf space for a “Makers” lab.

Also, libraries are important for early reading and summer reading programs.

IMLS and MacArthur Foundation partnered to fund grant for learning labs in libraries and museums.

People using library computers to find jobs.  Project Compass:  train libraries to help people find jobs — workforce development. Libraries need to work on digital education.

Report to the Nation:  http://www.imls.gov/assets/1/AssetManager/CtoCReport.pdf
Digging into Data:  http://www.diggingintodata.org/ — to create an international infrastructure for scholarship.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA):  http://dp.la/
* Broad public access to digital information
* future of library in a cloud
* responsive to changing modes of accessing information
* goes beyond collecting text in analog forms

Ebook Publishers and Libraries:  Win-win Solutions
Ken Roberts and Michael Ciccone Hamilton Public Library, Hamilton Ontario

Publishers trying out business models with Canadian 25 million people market.
“Canadian Urban Libraries Council” — 50 largest libraries of Canadian consortium (about 70% of population) worked with “Canadian Publishers’ Council”.  Publishers cautious about business model.  Worked with the Association of Canadian Publishers as well.

Hamilton County asked publishers what their average sale for mid and back list in the county was for the past three years.  They offered to pay Random House that amount of money for access to the mid, back list of eBooks.  Random House agreed.
This is a pilot program that will be reviewed after a year.  Patrons and libraries have the option to buy any of the titles, also, all licenses stay in Canada.

Ebrary: E-books Aren’t Print Books — Matt Barnes
Publishers fear prints sales will drop, e.g. they will only sale 8 out of 10 print books that they once sold.  Too much of this, and they will no longer be able to afford to sale print books.
Ebrary started with subscriptions.  Publishers weren’t excited about it, but would risk 3-5 year old titles (mostly academic).  They sold base collections; broad coverage; highly affordable; growing; backlist revenue for publishers.  Felt it was a win-win situation.
Business Models:
Perpetual Archive (PA) — libraries concerned about not owning titles.  Ensure library owns critical titles; ideal way to support advanced research; you select and purchase; many front lists; replicates print model.
PDA — cost effective way to expand access and support key programs; purchased based on usage; generous triggers; library set the parameters; expanded coverage for publishers.
Ebrary demonstrated that more content was exposed to patrons.
Short Term Loans (STL) — cost effective way to support programs without commitment. ILL replacement; new revenue stream for publishers; patrons pay for ILL. Ebrary is talking to OCLC about such a model.

All these new models were not around with print.  Room for new models.  Canadian convinced publishers that they were an alternative to Amazon.  Over 3,000,000 eyes on the library website.
Why are ebooks pricey? — running dual process (dual business) selling and producing both print and electronic books.  Same reason print books went up when electronic works came out.
Some publishers talking about producing new literary authors as epubs.

More and More:  When people access electronic content
Michael Porter — President of Library Renewal:  http://libraryrenewal.org/
Sarah Houghton (blogger: http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/ )
Andy Woodworth — co-producer of “Ebook Users’ Bill of Rights”  http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/the-ebook-users-bill-of-rights/
Andy — Publisher’s don’t trust our patrons, e.g. look how patrons rip library CD’s.
Sarah — Vendors lie to us:  Overdrive has indoor courts.  How many of our libraries have indoor courts? They kept saying ###% markup was as bad as it would get.  Now they are up to 300%.  When will it end?  She also says vendors are lying when they say publishers are preventing the vendors from letting the libraries own the ebook titles.  According to talks with publishers, this isn’t true.
She also said that librarians lie to themselves:  everyone reads ebook (only 5-10% of library books); we read contracts and negotiate hard (we don’t); without ebooks libraries will die (we are much more than just ebooks).
Michael Porter — libraries take what society produces and equalizes it.  Problem:  10 years, most content will be e-content. Format evolution requires new infrastructure.  What if we start to realize that there are more libraries than there are Starbucks or McDonalds. We can come together and provide our own platform for e-content, under a non-profit (much like OCLC), e.g. Library Renewal.  They are seeking funding to build a new model. Need more libraries to join. They have talked to publishers, who say that if LR builds it, they will put their products on it.  They will make more money by by-passing vendors.

The Future of Publishing
Scott Wusinger (EBSCO) — has been adding rapidly to NetLibrary collection and is making it more diverse.   Including 1 user, 3 user, and unlimited user purchase models.  Also title by title or collections.
They are including PDA and subscriptions.  They now have one time purchase price with no more fees.  They say they are charging publishing list price.
Also working on much better library management tools.
Steve Abram http://stephenslighthouse.com/ (Gale) — ebook won’t look like a book.  Gale is trying to digitize non-fiction 19th Century documents from around the world. They have contracts with China and Brazil. These scans are allowing Gale to view documents by the chapter and paragraph level. He says .PDF is about to die because its hard to read on phone.  Thinks html5 is the future. Says Google slowing down on book conversion. He believes that they have enough data now to allow use of ads. For people looking at managing their own ebooks, he says keep in mind that Gale has to manage 40,000 author rights a year.

http://booklamp.org/ — Reader Advisory for books (similar to Pandora for music).

Google Plus or Minus — Patrica Anderson, Joel Shields, Julie Strange and J. Shores.

Create circles for library, librarians, library committee, faculty liaisons, etc.
You can get launched “Pages” for institutions. Libraries have joined these.
* create a campaign for child resource.  create an account as a character in a story
* use as book guide
* use as a learning site
* use as a travel journal, e.g. for your book mobile.
* community events
* use for blogging

You can use Plus 1 to let your community recommend you.  Makes your library act like a trusted source for Google search (through “likes).
* use branding on G+ in header
* create a voting in a post (create comment bullets for voting then disable comments)
* Google Hangouts are becoming more popular.  Obama had one.
* Hangouts use for tutoring sessions, homework help, Michigan pushing for telecommuting, some people doing job interviews; outreach to bed ridden, book clubs, teaching sessions (she had taught origami in a hangout) and chamber music sessions.