Press: “Doing It for Themselves: Libraries and E-books”

“The merits of greater aggregation help motivate the interest in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) serving as a national platform provider for ebooks. In addition to an improved ability to provide robust social features like recommending and enhanced community level support, DPLA would presumably also be able to use aggregated demand for added leverage in publisher negotiations. However, mounting a national level ebook platform is technically challenging, particularly given the range of ILS catalog integrations that would be considered requisite by local libraries, and the difficulties of providing complex ebook rights accounting combined with transparent support of patron authentication. Furthermore, DPLA would be entering a competitive market space as a not-for-profit, despite pre-existing interest from commercial firms.”

From Peter Brantley’s post on PWxyz, Doing it for Themselves: Libraries and E-books