« Libraries charging for internet access is wrong | Main | eBook lending - continued. »

July 05, 2012

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Karl Drinkwater

I totally agree with your points, Phil. I come at it from the combined point of view of a librarian, library user, and author, which gives me an interesting perspective. I worry about some of the mistaken assumptions that get aired, often based on misunderstandings or inorrectly-applied analogies to the past, or other technologies. At the same time I think it is good that these issues are being debated, so that technology can work for us and not against us. I'd written to Ed Vaizey about one of my own bugbears as a technology user: DRM
http://karldrinkwater.blogspot.com/2012/05/e-book-lending-and-libraries.html It will be interesting to see where that fits in to the discussions that take place.

Chris Armstrong

Phil - as someone who has worked with two-thirds of the Welsh library authorities on their e-book offering, and met with a representatives of a fair percentage of the English ones to talk about issues surrounding adding e-books to their collections, I have to say that I support both of your points completely and absolutely. Either approach would be detrimental to public libraries - and to add further hurdles at a time when public libraries most need to present a positive front to their public is not helpful.

There is no justification for requiring a presence in the library in order to borrow an e-book (plenty of debate in this vein on this already!) and comments on lis-pub-libs about charging for internet access let alone charging to borrow books demonstrate the general feeling on the second point! Charging to borrow books flies in the face of everything libraries stand for.

Diana Nutting

A question rather than a comment - does PLR apply to e book lending? If Mr Tomlinson is concerned that auhors don't get compensated for e book lending, PLR would address the issue, and remove the debate about charging which, of course, like everyone else likely to comment here, I deplore.

Web Site Design Services

see it being promoted in this way. Paying to borrow books must be fought at every step of the way.

The comments to this entry are closed.

GoogleAdsense

GoogleAdsense

GoogleAdsense

My Photo

Subscribe!

  • Subscribe!
    Add to any service

My Flickr photographs

  • www.flickr.com
    This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from Phil Bradley. Make your own badge here.