HEY! YES! This is important! You can check out books from your local library (along with audiobooks and movies and music too!!) without ever having to leave your home. Here’s some links if you don’t know what OP was talking about: OverDrive, Hoopla
BUT ALSO!! Right now libraries are facing a problem with a new policy from very large publisher called Macmillan that’s due to be enacted in November.
As Jessamyn West explains in her article on CNN:
For the first two months after a Macmillan book is published, a library can only buy one copy, at a discount. After eight weeks, they can purchase “expiring” e-book copies which need to be re-purchased after two years or 52 lends. As publishers struggle with the continuing shake-up of their business models, and work to find practical approaches to managing digital content in a marketplace overwhelmingly dominated by Amazon, libraries are being portrayed as a problem, not a solution. Libraries agree there’s a problem – but we know it’s not us.
52 lends is nothing when it comes to popular books. In essence, this new policy would require libraries to re-purchase the same eBooks over and over just to continue to provide access to their readers.
Libraries already have to go through a lot of hoops and extra expense to provide digital content, and this policy will just make it even harder, more time consuming, and more expensive, thus making it more difficult for libraries to provide eBooks at a time when demand for eBook access at libraries is growing exponentially. Both the ALA and the PLA have come out strongly against thus policy, and it sets a TERRIBLE precedence for other publishing houses and future policies. It’s a bad idea that’s expensive and ultimately punishes the people who need libraries the most.
But YOU can do something about it, right now! Help us tell Macmillan publishing that their new policy is terrible and will adversely affect the people who need digital library access the most!
Check out the ALA’s action page for some great graphics and an auto-tweet form that will let you voice your displeasure to Macmillan directly.
Or you can just copy and paste it into Twitter from here, and add the graphic too if you want:
Limiting access to new titles for libraries means limiting access for readers who are most dependent on libraries. @MacmillanUSA’s new policy is unacceptable, John Sargent. Cancel the embargo. #eBooksForAll
Please help us keep library eBooks accessible for all! Not only will you help your libraries, but as OP explained, the more you use your libraries and other legal means of acquiring digital books and content, the more you take away from Amazon’s unconscionable domination of the eBook and digital content market. It’s a win-win.
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