Discussion of possible ebook lending scenarios for public libraries and the importance of network scale platforms to support ebook services.

1. Peter Brantley Tampa
Internet Archive Florida
The Presidio 11.2011

2. Let’s explore out some of the ramifications
for libraries of the ebook market explosion.

3. Let’s assume ebook market penetration
continues to grow rather rapidly.

4. In fact, let’s assume that the ebook market
is around an 80+ percent market in <= 5 yrs.
(for trade at least)
- via Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical Co.

5. Providing access to ebooks requires a
platform based service with an attractive
catalog and technical infrastructure.
(‘Cuz you don’t put ebooks on shelves).

6. Ebook platforms aggregate user data,
intentionality, preferences, and social
information.
(Nothing inherently evil about this; it comes
with the territory).

7. Overdrive is current de facto national digital
library platform for public libraries. 3M and
others might present effective competition.

8. Overdrive occupies a sweet spot, but it
requires sophisticated contract licensing and
negotiation skills, and well-developed
engineering capacity.

9. Overdrive does not function solely as the
intermediary between the library and the
publisher. They are also the intermediary
between a reading system retailer and the
publisher.

10. In a manner, they sell rental access to ebooks
to nook and Kobo users, via libraries. It’s just
that the libraries pick up the rental fees.

11. In other words, they are in acting as a
distributor of books, just like Ingram.
(In fact, in book markets, they operate
exactly like Ingram.)

12. Overdrive’s ability to support EPUB, an open
standard for digital book packaging, reduces
its overhead costs and permits it to serve a
wide number of users and reading systems.

13. When Overdrive provides access to EPUB-
format ebooks with vanilla Adobe ACS DRM,
they can gather usage data across consumers
with different reading systems.

14. This is why Overdrive has been active in the
digital book standards community.
With an open standard, they can host books
in a single format to serve multiple channels:
B&N nook, Kobo, and other reading systems.

15. But not everyone uses the open standard,
EPUB. Amazon uses its own Kindle format.

16. In Overdrive’s new agreement with Amazon,
it is not permitted to distribute Kindle files;
it’s role is deprecated to a “network switch”
on catalog metadata.

17. Amazon provides Kindle ebooks direct to the
library user, via the user’s Amazon account.

18. The privileging of Amazon – retaining its
proprietary ebook platform and the data
aggregation it generates – is prophetic.

19. Overdrive, 3M, and similar vendors are not
unique in having a massive catalog of books
with a technical infrastructure capable of
serving public libraries.

20. Both Amazon and Google have massive and
deep catalogs in digital books, international
in scope. (Both companies are establishing
ebook stores in other countries).

21. Google’s catalog encompasses long historical
period; Amazon’s includes exclusive offerings
from current authors.

22. In October 2011, Pearson, a very prominent
publisher, announced a partnership with
Google that provides access to a free LMS
bundled with Google Apps for Education.

23. It is easy to imagine a library systems vendor
(III, Sirsi, Ex Libris) partnering with Google to
provide library subscription services to GBS.

24. (Library subscription was one of the proposed
commercial models in the failed Google Book
Search settlement proposals).

25. ILS vendors could integrate GBS title access
into library catalog discovery interfaces via
APIs. (They do this with the bibliographic
APIs for HathiTrust and IA’s Open Library.)

26. Amazon has already partnered with a library
systems vendor (that would be Overdrive).
But they now also offer renting of titles, or
the lending of titles on a subscription basis,
direct to consumer.

27. Announced 04/11/2011, Amazon Prime
customers will get “free” borrowing for
ebooks (i.e., free rental) through their
subscription, just like they get access to
streaming movies.

28. Amazon Prime Library

29. For Amazon, the loss of revenue from lending
(versus selling) is more than compensated for
by increased traffic to the Amazon web site.

30. That’s the value of a platform.

31. You can take a “loss” on one service if you
drive increased traffic to your other services,
because some of that traffic will convert.

32. So where would this likely leave us?

33. Like HE libraries, public libraries license
access to the majority of the electronic
content that users request and expect.

34. Libraries will continue to license access to
ebooks, vs. buying-to-own, because they
need access to platforms.

35. Amazon Prime Lending suggests that public
libraries are becoming the public hospitals of
ebooks: struggling to finance support for the
underprivileged through community dollars.

36. Is there an alternative?

37. In 10/2011, State librarians through COSLA
endorsed library participation in the Internet
Archive’s Open Library lending program.

38. Libraries contribute books for digitization and
lending access is provided to the participating
libraries. California, North Carolina, and
Kansas are already participating.

39. The COSLA endorsement, while a first step,
leaves unspecified the funding sources that
are required to support a large digital book
database.

40. It requires significant communal effort and
funding redirection & reallocation by many
State and public library systems.
(DPLA seems to be vacuuming up available
private grant funding, fwiw.)

41. For IA to develop a comprehensive library, it
would have to aggregate not just older <2001
digitized books, but develop an acquisition
program for frontlist titles with publishers.

42. Ideally by buying them.
But up until now (11/2011) the purchase of
ebooks has been limited to niche distributors
(Smashwords, Gale) or alternative presses.

43. It is not yet obvious that publishers would
participate in public library title acquisition if
there are commercial sector alternatives for
lending platforms.

44. Libraries would need to demonstrate that
lend does not fully substitute for purchase.
I.e.,: the lending market does not greatly
impinge upon the book purchase market.

45. It also creates curious market issues if Open
Library successfully competes with Overdrive
services via collectivization of public library
interests.

46. If we all band together.
If we all work together.
It is an interesting future.

47. We cannot be confident in this scenario.

48. It is not mad for libraries to “write off” ebooks
and focus on services that will be attractive in
the future.

49. Longer term trends suggest this. An
increasing number of things that today we
call “ebooks” will turn into enhanced
websites.

50. “As EPUB evolves as a format it seems clear that it
would allow for more and more interactivity, more
and more functionality, and still work within a broad
range of web browsers and/or web-based renders
and readers.”
- Brian Sandusky, Kaplan Publishing,
2011 IDPF Board candidate statement.

51. You see it everywhere. Not just in Wikipedia
and cookbooks, travel guides, music scores,
building codes, and most legal information.

52. The Push Pop Press*’ Our Choice by Al Gore Jr
is the most beautifully designed mixed media
offering to date.
(*now owned by Facebook, interestingly.)

54. In other words, the market for content will
itself diminish the role and importance of
books for libraries.

55. This suggests that direct (e)book provisioning
by libraries, in all forms, will diminish over the
long run – even as we see circulation increase
today.

56. This isn’t all bad.
Really, it’s true!

57. It will permit libraries to invest in the things
that matter, like digital media and learning.

58. It will provide added impetus for libraries to
open digital media learning centers in their
communities, modeled on Chicago’s
YouMedia.

59. It will encourage libraries to concentrate on
community resources, such as partnerships
with new local newspapers – for example,
“Berkeley Side” and “Mission Local” in the
Bay Area.

60. It will foster investigation of personal data
archiving services and time-lining support.

61. The next library:
providing digital media services for
community and individual needs.

62. It’s a very, very different library.
But, these are different times.

63. peter brantley
director, bookserver project
internet archive
san francisco ca
@naypinya
(twitter)