Librarians, Publishers, and Vendors Revisit E-books

The resurgence of interest in e-books, who uses them, and where the technology is headed were among the issues discussed March 16 at the eBooks in the Public Library Conference in New York, sponsored by the Open eBook Forum (OeBF). Roughly 200 librarians, publishers, and vendors braved a winter squall to share their expertise and experiences. Presenters were a mix of librarians discussing their e-book programs and corporate reps plugging products.

All unanimously agreed that public libraries are paramount to the future success of e-books. OeBF president Steve Potash declared that the e-book market is "set to explode." Just a few years ago there was no copyrighted e-book material, Potash noted; currently one million e-books have already been copyrighted.

Potash also remarked that the concept of digitized texts initially failed because marketers looked to publishers and booksellers to generate interest when they should have concentrated on libraries. "What better institutions to evangelize new reading than libraries," Potash declared. Libraries, he said, have a "proud history of education…they're not afraid to test new technologies because they're not concerned with profits." His remarks were well received by the librarian-dominated audience.

Library budgets have bottomed out, making an investment in e-books difficult. Librarians, however, can justify e-book costs by the significant savings of physical space, their efficiency (fewer staff involved), permanency (e-books never get lost or stolen), and 24/7 availability. These factors and the ability to enlarge the library's public service face can be used to "take the library to politicians" and "reach out to voters" to make library funding a top priority, said Jean Bedord, a consultant and senior analyst for Shore Communications, a content producer.

Mike Williams, manager of the Indianapolis–Marion County Public Library's Irvington Branch, advised the crowd to "always put e-books in the catalog" to inform patrons of their availability. Williams, who has been involved in e-books since winning ten Rocket eBook readers (which, today, "make nice paperweights"), predicted that the next wave in the e-book evolution may not be digitized text but downloadable audiobooks. Indeed, several other speakers also voiced interest in digitized audiobooks for downloading on iPods and other personal devices.

Cleveland Public Library's (CPL) Patricia Lowry, head of technical services, agreed that e-books are a "natural progression of services" and can reduce staff costs. She also warned attendees to do their homework before investing. "Everything we thought we knew about who'd use e-books was wrong," she said, explaining that when CPL made its initial e-books purchase, staff assumed that sf heads would be the main audience, so they concentrated on those titles. In fact, romances, mysteries, and best sellers proved hot while the sf titles went largely unread.

Despite the skyrocketing number of e-books, more content is needed. Theresa Horners, HarperCollins's director of e-book operations, said that while everything from Stephen King to Jane Austen is available electronically, there are barriers to digitizing books, including length, complexity of design and production issues (extensive charts/ tables/art), rights and royalties, piracy fears, and cannibalization of print sales. Also, she insists that "not every print book makes a good e-book," citing cooking and travel titles as digital disasters. HarperCollins is pressing toward making electronic counterparts for all of its titles, but that is some distance down the road.

Gale's Bonnie Hawkwood added that the reference giant is proceeding slowly in its e-book program, releasing titles one at a time, although she said that e-books provide a great opportunity to get reference books "out from behind the desk" and into the hands of patrons. The company is phasing out CD-ROMs and, as an experiment, releasing certain titles such as Major 20th Century Writers exclusively as a five-volume e-book.

One common complaint among the librarian speakers was the large number of formats in which e-books are released. The plethora of platforms makes it nearly impossible for libraries to serve the multiple devices patrons wield, not to mention the cost of purchasing the same title in varying formats. Several speakers called upon publishers to devise standards to simplify purchasing and downloading. Angelina Bernedetti, young adult materials selector for the King County Library System, WA, said that Adobe-based e-books were "far outdistancing" their Palm-based counterparts in circulation figures.

Regarding pricing, the current business model is "whatever the traffic will bear," said Tom Peters of TAP Information Services. netLibrary's Gillian Harrison and others noted that "we're looking to test new models, [but] we're caught between the established library market and the established publishing industry," which currently dictate the one book, one user model.

Representatives from Dynix and Sirsi offered the vendor perspective on implementing e-books. Most important, e-book records must be loaded into library OPACs using the NCIP protocol. Dynix's Brad Whittle lamented that better integration must be developed so that adding e-book records is seamless for staff. Sirsi's Tom Gates said that his company is working toward making e-books one more material type added to library work flows. Gates stated that interaction between librarians and e-book publishers is essential so the latter can see how well their products circulate, which could generate more popular content.

OCLC's Lisa Elliot, however, asserted that integration of e-books into library catalogs is being stymied by lack of standards and by each vendor employing different methods. She believes that MARC is not the "be all and end all" and that librarians must be involved in creating new record standards for e-book integration.

Although the vendor reps expressed genuine interest in helping libraries serve the public, keynote speaker Daniel Walters, executive director of the Las Vegas/Clark County Library District, LJ's 2003 Library of the Year, offered scathing criticism of automated system vendors. "The ILS community," insisted Walters, "has fundamentally missed the business we're in." His objections are based on interface design, which, he claims, takes patrons out of the library's homepage to other sites when they click on a link. "We don't want users to leave the library's site to use [our resources]," he said, with a nod to Amazon.com and eBay as examples of high-traffic sites that pull outside information into their homepages rather than whisking users elsewhere.

Walters also finds ILS vendors inflexible and unwilling to customize their products to meet individual libraries' needs. Walters said that he attended last summer's American Library Association (ALA) conference in Toronto to shop for an ILS system but went home empty-handed because none of the vendors he met with could provide the system he needs. Instead, they wanted him to buy the system they have and make do. That strategy is unacceptable to Walters. He intends to meet with additional vendors at the upcoming ALA 2004 conference in Orlando, FL, and is presenting a program on his experiences at the ALA show in 2005.