DPLA: The big news recently has been Penguin’s decision to terminate its contract with OverDrive, the biggest digital content supplier to public libraries in the US. As it stands, three of the “Big Six” publishers do not lend ebooks to libraries (Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and now Penguin). For those unfamiliar with the e-lending situation, could you sketch out some of the more significant events predating this one between the major trade publishers and libraries over ebook lending?

Michael Kelley: I would say, from the viewpoint of a typical librarian in a public library, OverDrive’s introduction of Kindle compatibility in September was a huge event. OverDrive was able to increase its customer base by over a third through its association with Amazon, and librarians no longer had to explain to patrons why they couldn’t use the most popular ereader to borrow library books.

Unfortunately, the OverDrive-Amazon partnership really upset the publishers, who didn’t like the idea of a library transaction becoming an Amazon transaction, and this played a role in Penguin’s decision to terminate its contract with OverDrive this month. HarperCollins’s introduction of a 26-loan cap in February 2011 was also a big event that angered many librarians, but the criticism has been more muted recently, given that Harper still makes its entire portfolio available while other Big Six publishers more strictly limit access to their front and backlist. I thought it was interesting that NYPL told me recently that they have 5000 plus ebooks from HarperCollins and not one has yet hit the cap, and I doubt items in the long tail will every approach it.

DPLA: ALA leaders met recently with a number of execs from the major publishers to discuss ebook lending. Molly Raphael, President of the ALA, seemed relatively optimistic about the meetings, suggesting a new long-term dialogue between publishers and libraries. From your understanding, do these talks signal anything new? Is there reason to believe that libraries and major publishers are on their way to sorting through the fundamental issues?

MK: It’s hard to say. I think ALA’s membership is very happy to see Molly Raphael and Keith Fiels taking a more active approach, but there is concern that this will drag on while many librarians are impatient for a resolution now. Many public librarians view access to best-selling titles as their meat and potatoes, and every day they have to tell patrons they cannot provide them access to these digital titles gives them an unjustified black eye. ALA has limited power and resources, but it’s constructive to have a temperate discussion with publishers, to acknowledge and appreciate their genuine anxiety. I am looking forward to reading a report from Stan Besen that ALA has commissioned about ebook business models. It was supposed to be out in December, but they are still working on it last I heard.

DPLA: Douglas County Libraries in Colorado has emerged in recent months as a potentially viable alternative to leased digital content in public libraries. What exactly have they done so far, and what do they hope to accomplish? In your estimation, what are the possible implications?

MK: Douglas County is replicating the print model for digital content. They bought an Adobe Content Server and they struck deals with various publishers (none of the Big Six) to purchase (truly purchase, not lease access to) the ebook file, house it on the library server, and manage the DRM. They convinced the participating publishers that the library had the requisite technological safeguards in place to protect the rightholders’ intellectual content. The model reaffirms the library’s traditional role as a reliable steward of such content. I find it interesting that some library vendors will pitch an “ownership model,” knowing how this resonates with librarians. But the fine print always shows that the libraries are not really gaining ownership of the content in these deals, like they are in Douglas County. Jamie LaRue has been talking with other libraries in Colorado about ways to replicate the model elsewhere. It’s a very concrete, activist approach that deserves attention and support.

DPLA: There’s been a lot of well-publicized talk and a few exemplary cases of public libraries that have emerged as read/write spaces, or libraries that devote a significant amount of their resources to facilitate creativity and production in addition to reading and other traditional activities. Where do ebooks fit into this transition?

MK: Yes there’s a lot of talk about remaking library space as use of print collections dwindles. Ebooks are a part of that and I also wonder what the impact of streaming video will have on library traffic and circulation numbers over the next few years. Espresso print machines, music studios, gaming contests are all ways to keep people coming to the library.

DPLA: From your perspective as a library news reporter, what are some trends in libraries and library lending that we’re bound to hear more about over the next few years?  

MK: I hope we will see non-participating publishers launching pilot programs to test the library waters and reassure themselves that a library lending model is possible for digital as well as print. It’s important that reporting on the issue is accurate. For example, Hachette Group is frequently said to not make its ebooks available for library lending, but it does make its backlist available up until April 2010. Amazon’s Lending Library now has over 100,000 titles. I wonder what that means. It’s also important not to forget small and rural libraries and the whole digital divide, which is where DPLA’s efforts could be especially interesting. And I am very interested to see where the open access movement is going, since it seems particularly galvanized by RWA (Research Works Act) at the moment. Also, preservation and copyright issues (particularly court cases impacting First Sale). There’s a lot to cover!

Photo courtesy of Andrew Mason on Flickr; used under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Yet for blind readers, such experiences are not as accessible.  In 1868, the Boston Public Library had a small library for the blind, but a national program did not yet exist.  The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped was founded in 1931 so “that all may read.”  The program circulates recorded and Braille materials to libraries that then distribute them to handicapped readers through services like Talking Book libraries—programs often funded by Library Service and Technology Act grants from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.  The Service functions through 56 regional and 56 subregional libraries in America and offers 64 million copies of more than 341,982 titles.

Braille was invented by a knowledge-hungry, blind French teenager in the early 19^th century, the language’s bumps developed from an old French military code.  Surely at the time Louis Braille would have been unable to imagine that books could one day speak, or that a diffuse web of zeros and ones could someday allow for all the world’s knowledge to be instantly accessible.  Yet this is the world we now inhabit, and digital books present a new frontier for blind as well as print disabled readers.

In 2010, the Internet Archive announced that it had more than doubled the number of books available to print disabled readers.  Through a format called Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY), more than one million books of all kinds were digitized and uploaded to the Internet Archive.  In the press release, IA founder and DPLA Steering Committee member Brewster Kahle speaks to digital libraries’ untapped potential.  “Every person deserves the opportunity to enhance their lives through access to the books that teach, entertain and inspire…. Bringing access to huge libraries of books to the blind and print disabled is truly one of the benefits of the digital revolution.”  DAISY books can be read aloud on devices like Intel Readers or the proprietary NLS player that allow for greater control of the text’s presentation than an audiobook might.  Apps like Read2Go provide print disabled readers with access to Bookshare texts and a number of tools that make reading easier for them.

Digital books and the projects that make, collect, and distribute them, then, are not simply about making the physical into the digital.  Pulitzer prize-winning poet Philip Schultz wrote about learning to read in his New York Times op-ed “Words Failed, Then Saved Me”: “I’d lie in bed silently imitating the words my mother read, imagining the taste, heft and ring of each sound as if it were coming out of my mouth…I imagined the words and their sounds being a kind of key with which I would open an invisible door to a world previously denied me.”  No longer does it take a doting mother or the imagination of a Pulitzer Prize winner to free words locked in lifeless ink and change them into endlessly repeatable sounds—and perhaps, someday, as-yet-unimaginable languages and formats.  If an 18-year old French boy can invent a new language for the blind, then surely librarians, app designers, engineers, teachers, and citizens the world over can not only digitize all the world’s knowledge, but also bring knowledge to all the world.

On Friday, March 2, Harvard Library Strategic Conversations will sponsor a program entitled “Building the Digital Public Library of America”.  Featured speakers, Prof. Robert Darnton and Prof. John G. Palfrey, will discuss the Digital Public Library of America project from its beginnings up to the current date.

The program will be held at 3:00 pm in the Ames Courtroom of Austin Hall, on the campus of Harvard Law School (off of Massachusetts Avenue near the underpass, across from Cambridge Common).

Professor Darnton will open the program with remarks about the beginnings of the DPLA project.  Professor Palfrey will then bring discussion up to the current date, and a question, answer and conversation period will follow.

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor, University Librarian, Harvard University, and a founder of the DPLA.  John G. Palfrey is Henry N. Ess Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School.  Palfrey is also the Chair of the DPLA Steering Committee.  The DPLA effort is now housed in the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

The program is free and open to the public.  It will include a question and answer period, and light refreshments will be served.

The program is co-organized by Virginia McVarish, Lisa Junghahn, Kathleen Hunter Rutter and Donna Viscuglia.  For more information, telephone Lisa at 617-496-2123 or email Virginia at  mcvarish at fas.harvard.edu.

This meeting is part of a series titled Harvard Library Strategic Conversations.  The Harvard Library Strategic Conversations planning committee is made up of volunteer members of the library community.  Our mission is to engage library colleagues in open, community-driven discussion about the future of libraries. 

Contact:
Lisa Junghahn, 617-496-2123
Virginia McVarish,  mcvarish at fas.harvard.edu

Paul Biba proposes rental system as solution to publisher ebook-lending concerns.
“I think an ebook rental service, run in conjunction with the existing Overdrive architecture, would be a great solution to the publishing industry’s problems. Here’s how it would work: if your local branch subscribes to the Overdrive system, it would get them access not just to some of the books in the catalogue, but to ALL of them. However, the system would restrict them to one ‘free’ copy of each title per library system, which patrons could wishlist and sign out as they presently do.”
From the TeleRead article, “An ebook rental option: the solution to OverDrive’s library woes?”

DPLA Dev team heralds the arrival of BibSoup.
“Congratulations to the Open Knowledge Foundation on the launch of BibSoup, a site where anyone can upload and share a bibliography. It’s a great idea, and an awesome addition to the developing knowledge ecosystem.”
From the Dev team blog. Learn more about BibSoup here.

Library as Incubator Project shows the importance of libraries in the creative process.
“Last October the Library as Incubator Project website officially launched, quickly attracting visitors and contributors (the site both solicits and accepts submissions of library-inspired work) from Lisbon, Iowa, to as far off as Brisbane, Australia. The stories of writers and artists who have in some way utilized a library in creating their work—whether by doing research there, using cast-off books in installations, presenting their work in the space, or just soaking up ideas from the stacks—are featured on the website alongside their work. Artists are asked to describe how libraries have been instrumental to their craft and how they hope to see libraries figuring into artworks in the future. Librarians share details of archival exhibitions, creative programs, and special events that have taken place at their facilities.”
From Melissa Faliveno’s article for Poets & Writers, “The Library as Incubator Project”

Taking currently functional, large-scale, non-commercial digital libraries as a frame of reference, the report seeks to understand different system architectures, content types, storage and content delivery mechanisms, and metadata formats in order to help support the DPLA’s technical infrastructure decisions. The study is divided into six parts along these lines and focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on mass digitization projects and large digital libraries with “interesting resource management approaches.” The Open Content Alliance/Internet Archive, California Digital Library, HathiTrust, Europeana, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) are featured prominently in the report.

The study looks at the many issues surrounding the decision of whether to host content centrally or to provide federated search access to content spread across many repositories. It evaluates storage systems such as clustered storage and the possible need for a separate content streaming infrastructure. It also presents different models of metadata representation and management such as flat, relational, and RDF triples, and different approaches to metadata collection, including mapping services and crawling approaches. After storage, metadata, and harvesting options are examined, the report then looks at various search options such as Lucene, Solr and Z39.50, and concerns related to system architecture and long-term sustainability.

Overall, the report strongly advises the use of open standards and the development of scalable, modular architectures that are founded in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles. It stresses the need for an early and ongoing evaluation of the sustainability of both the technical systems and the organization as a whole in order to create a successful digital library that users will feel they can trust.

Geneva requests that all feedback and comments be submitted via the Technical Workstream listserv or directly to her (ghenry@rice.edu) by February 17, 2012.

Big publishers still tentative on ebooks after ALA meeting.
“Although the American Library Association and major publishers are talking to each other about ebook lending, it seems they are going to cordially disagree for the foreseeable future — even as more librarians offer evidence that some of the publishers’ concerns may not be completely justified and the CEO for OverDrive says he is ‘bullish for 2012.’

‘We haven’t found a business model that works for us or our authors,’ said Michelle Fadlalla, the director of library marketing at Simon & Schuster. “No vendor has come in with the right solution for us,” she said.”
From Michael Kelly’s article, “Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Express Concerns About Library Ebook Lending After ‘Positive’ Talks with ALA”

Austrian National Library to put 600,000 books online.
“In a public-private partnership with Google, the Austrian National Library is digitising its historical book holdings. Some 600,000 volumes from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries will be digitised and made available free of charge. The project demonstrates that public-private partnerships can be successful in enabling our heritage institutions to provide large-scale access to their holdings, provided that such partnerships are not exclusive and free access is ensured. The article outlines the preparatory phase and work flows established in the project.”
Via TeleRead.

Penguin cuts ties with OverDrive.
“Three months of library drama are coming to a climax this evening as big-six publisher Penguin announced that it is ending its relationship with digital library distributor OverDrive. Starting tomorrow, it will stop offering e-books and digital audiobooks to libraries—at least until it finds a new partner.”
From Laura Hazard Owen’s article, “Penguin Ends E-Book Library Lending And Relationship With OverDrive”

While Penguin has not provided an extensive explanation for the February 10th cutoff, commentators have speculated that publisher “disintermediation” from library lending has become one of the driving factors in the decision.With the increased prevalence of digital lending to Amazon Kindle devices, a service which draws patrons from OverDrive to a third-party site (i.e., Amazon), reporters like Michael Kelley of The Digital Shift claim that the new set-up has “left some publishers feeling a bit left out in the cold, since the supply chain that has grown up around library lending of ebooks has evolved among other third-party commercial entities without much input from the publishers.”  During talks with ALA leaders on January 30 and February 1, Penguin and other publishing leaders expressed fear of a truly “frictionless” lending environment in which readers, offered the ability to borrow from home without any sort of physical inconvenience (i.e., having to actually go to the library–and back), will shirk the purchase of new titles. The idea of library e-lending cannibalizing sales has been a reoccurring concern for major publishers.

Of the Big Six publishers, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan do not offer digital titles in any form to libraries or library wholesalers. Hachette does not lend their frontlist ebooks. HarperCollins operates under a 26-loan cap, while Random House offers unrestricted access to its digital titles despite a recent uptick in prices.

Photo courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales on Flickr

Flash is the only animal of his kind, but he wishes he could just belong to a pack like everyone else at the zoo. He first tries to become another animal, in order to fit in. He tries to be a giraffe; he tries to be a gazelle; he even tries to be a zebra. Along the way, though, Flash realizes that it’s more rewarding to be himself – no more, no less.

“Libraries and librarians crossing over from print to digital must feel a lot like Flash. Even newly born entities like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) are finding themselves in an awkward period of not knowing what they should be.

“I was a guest at a recent DPLA ‘Audience and Participation Work Stream’ meeting that brought together participants with a variety of perspectives and experience, but joined by a deep concern for the future of libraries. We met at the Dallas Public Library, just after the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting at the nearby Convention Center. Our charge was to help articulate ‘why we need a public library when it’s all on the web’ and suggest how to attract involvement from all types of libraries.

“The DPLA has the incredibly difficult task ahead. It must weave together many distinctive strands of activity emerging from a strong but inchoate desire for the missions of libraries to continue in new more powerful ways.  It’s encouraging to me that the DPLA leadership is spending a lot of time learning about the needs and desires of diverse communities. But I think that sometimes our understanding of what libraries are today holds us back from seeing what the library movement could be tomorrow. Separating the essential from the institutional manifestation is not always easy to do.”

From Eric Hellman’s post on Go to Hellman, Libraries Happen

DPLA Dev Team releases first build.
“First, about the tech spec, or more exactly, the  scope document: We’re working with Nick Caramello and Pod Consulting on building a useful set of docs that lay out a proposed path at multiple levels, from descriptions of the strategies for each area to detailed specs. As a start, a couple of weeks ago we posted a plain English overview on the wiki, which is both exceedingly general and hugely provisional. We will continue to iterate — with you, we very much hope — on far more detailed and technical documents over the next couple of months, primarily on the wiki. The scoping docs will raise issues we will need to address together, and will provide a way for us to make decisions about what functionality to support and what the (loosely-coupled) infrastructure should include. We need your help and participation, because the questions are huge, our team is tiny, and the deadline of April 2013 is just around the corner. Are we including the right services? Architecting it appropriately? In a scaleable yet do-able way? Are there open source projects we should be using? What else?”
From the Dev team’s blog.

ALA-Publishers meeting proves fruitful; Random House maintains pro-library lending policies.
“Never has a price increase been such good news for libraries. At a meeting with ALA leaders this week in New York, Random House officials said the ‘terms of sale’ for Random House e-books to libraries will change, with a price increase coming. But the publisher reiterated its commitment to library e-book lending, saying they would continue to enable e-book lending of their entire list for both adult and children’s titles, backlist and frontlist, without restriction. ‘No change,’ Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told PW in a briefing this morning, when asked about Random Houses’s current policy of not limiting lends (such as HarperCollins) or title availability (such as Penguin, Hachette) or not lending at all (Macmillan and Simon & Schuster).”
Via InfoDocket.

David Weinberger speaks with Marilyn Johnson about librarians as tech-literacy teachers.
“Even as technology takes over more and more of our lives many of us are living in a technology cemetery, filled with old gadgets we have no idea how to revive, computers we don’t know how to program, and ebooks we have no idea how to download to.

Johnson argues that this is a huge opportunity for libraries to revive their place as centers of the community, for librarians to exist not just as oracles of the reference book, but as guides to the technical world.”
Listen to the podcast here.

Harvard library thinkers lead experimental seminar in library design.
“As described on www.librarytestkitchen.org, this is a seminar about making.  A prototyping lab for libraries. Our goal is to create products, services & experiences, broadly defined, for the Harvard Library community. Generous funding to realize these projects is provided by Prof. Robert Darnton and the Harvard Library Lab. Projects will be deployed in «Test Kitchens» — partner libraries, such as the Loeb and Widener Libraries, that allocate portions of their public space to these experiments.”
From the Harvard Library Lab blog, “Library Test Kitchen”

To help set the stage, I gave a brief report on the activities of the Technical Aspects Workstream and the interim Technical Development team led by David Weinberger.

Here’s my presentation, mostly pretty pictures, showed a lot of the Tech/Dev wiki to flesh it out. Plug for Too Big to Know totally my doing.

Technical Aspects Workstream Update. Martin R. Kalfatovic. DPLA Content & Scope Workshop. College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA. 2 February 2012.