Canadian Bookshelf's virtual library launches beta, with surprising benefits to publishers
By Sue Carter Flinn June 16, 2011: 5:15 PM
Two years ago, when the Association of Canadian Publishers first conceived of the virtual library website Canadian Bookshelf, one of the initial challenges it faced was how to define what would be considered a Canadian title. Beth Bruder, chair of the Canadian Bookshelf committee, and vice-president of sales and marketing for Dundurn Press, says the decision to focus on authors (as opposed to publishers) has created an unexpected benefit: a "bridge" between the ACP and the Canadian Publishers' Council, which represents 18 multinational companies.
"It's an ACP initiative, and yet we're working in association with Canadian Publishers' Council. If it is a Canadian author, it will show up on this site," says Bruder.
Canadian Bookshelf is currently in a beta phase, available to the public for browsing, with a full launch anticipated by mid-September. Users are encouraged to review titles, and to share content with other users through the website, or through social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook. The website is powered by BookNet Canada's BiblioShare, a data aggregator service that pulls book and author metadata directly from publishers.
Bruder says the website's presence has already improved the quality of metadata collected by Canadian publishers. "It used to be that you had the ISBN, the trim size, page count, [and] author," she says. "This has been the first time people have been saying, 'Hey we need more than an ISBN, we need a book cover, we want reviews, awards, we want more.'"
For some publishers, especially the Canadian divisions of multinationals, it took time to collect the information, which caused delays for Canadian Bookshelf's launch. "The branch plants had difficulties because they don't control their own data as much - they're often part of the bigger structure in the U.S., so it was difficult to get enough titles," Bruder says. "We wanted to wait until the site was in good shape, so users would come to the site and get excited by what they see."
As for its target audience, Bruder anticipates Canadian Bookshelf will appeal to a broad cross-section of readers. "Certainly librarians have said, 'Where can I find a list of Canadian authors?' Schools and universities will be big users. It has tremendous scope."
HarperCollins sets checkout limits on library e-books
By Dan Misener, CBC News Posted: Mar 9, 2011 11:09 AM ET | Last Updated: Mar 9, 2011 8:12 PM ET
As of March 7, HarperCollins e-book titles licensed to Canadian schools and public libraries come with a new restriction: after 26 checkouts, they self-destruct.
The e-books simply won't work anymore. If a library wants to keep lending that book, it'll have to buy a new license, potentially buying the same book over and over again.
Right now, I can borrow electronic books from my local public library and download them to my computer, e-reader or other portable device. But here's the thing: when I download an e-book, I'm not actually downloading it from my library. In many cases, I'm downloading it from a service called OverDrive, an e-book distributor that many Canadian public libraries use.
When OverDrive distributes an electronic book, it wraps it in DRM (digital rights management) software - basically, a digital lock that determines what I can and can't do with that e-book. Essentially, HaperCollins has told OverDrive to add a new restriction, rendering its digital books useless after 26 checkouts.
Why 26? When I called HarperCollins Canada for an explanation, they didn't have one for me. But according to trade publication Library Journal, the number 26 has to do with "the average lifespan of a print book and wear and tear on circulating copies."
Obviously, paper books are susceptible to many kinds of wear and tear. People spill coffee on paper books. They ruin books by dropping them into bathtubs. They dog-ear pages and scribble in margins. Eventually, libraries get rid of old, worn books. From the publisher's point of view, that's a good thing, because it means an opportunity to sell replacement copies. Not so with the unlimited-use e-books publishers have been licensing to libraries for the past several years.
It's almost impossible for your dog to eat a digital copy of a book. HarperCollins's 26-use limit seems to be an attempt to create artificial scarcity.
26-checkout limit too low
OverDrive says this is the first time one of its publishers has placed a per-use limit on e-books. The digital lending caps apply worldwide but only to titles that libraries license after March 7. Existing licenses will remain unlimited.
The cost of e-book licences varies by title and can be as low as $3 or many times that. OverDrive said there's no universal standard on what books cost more and that it's up to publishers to set their own prices.
When I first heard about the HarperCollins announcement, I called up Vickery Bowles. She's the director of collections management at the Toronto Public Library. She understands why publishers want to place this kind of restriction on their e-books and agrees that there needs to be another business model that works for both libraries and publishers. But, Bowles says, the 26-use cap "isn't the right one."
I also talked to Keith Walker, president of the Canadian Library Association, who said libraries need to be able to control the circulation of digital books.
"Libraries need to be able to own that content, as we do with print, [and to] be able to set our own circulation use policies," he said. "There's conflict right now with publishers who may not understand that the libraries want to be able to continue the same way that we have with print."
Walker and other librarians take issue with the assertion that paper books wear out after 26 checkouts. One group of librarians in Oklahoma posted a video to YouTube showcasing paper versions of HarperCollins books that have been checked out 26 times or more: most were still in very good shape.
2-tier system
An OverDrive representative said HarperCollins titles are now segregated from the rest of the distributor's offerings to keep librarians from unintentionally licensing e-books with use-based limits. As librarians explained it to me, this has created a two-tiered system for e-books: unlimited-use titles and titles that expire after 26 checkouts.
Of course, HarperCollins is perfectly free to change the terms of new licenses whenever it wants, and libraries are free to take up the new offerings (or not). The Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma (which made the YouTube video) wrote in an open letter to HarperCollins that "until a change is made in the licensing, the Virtual Library cannot, in good conscience. spend our limited budget to repeatedly purchase e-book titles from HarperCollins or any other publisher who enforces checkout limits."
It seems this is just another example of an old, scarcity-based business model butting heads with a new digital model. It's a story that's playing out across the digital media landscape and has repercussions far beyond libraries. For me, the danger with the HarperCollins decision has to do with the precedent it sets and the slippery slope it might send us down.
What happens if publishers decide they'd prefer a 13-use cap? Or an entirely pay-per-use model?
Time to figure out new rules
Beyond books and libraries, we're seeing a larger trend toward DRM-restricted media: digital movie rentals that expire 24 hours after you press play or music files that are rendered worthless if you stop paying a monthly access fee.
When I buy a paper book, I can lend it to a friend, store it on my shelf indefinitely or donate it to a rummage sale. Not so with DRM-restricted material.
Here in Canada, library e-book circulation is still low. Bowles said e-books currently represent less than one per cent of the Toronto Public Library's overall circulation. But, she says, they are "growing exponentially."
As e-book use grows, so does the importance of collaboration between publishers and libraries in the digital space, says Walker.
If you ask me, the time to figure out these business models is now - while the stakes are (relatively) low.
Do we want our digital media with or without DRM? Do we want electronic books, movies and music that self-destruct or belong to us permanently? Should we be able to lend our digital media to one another? And how does anybody get paid?
These are the things we should be thinking about, because the decisions and precedents that we set now will shape the digital media landscape for years to come.
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