“Harvard Library’s Faculty Advisory Council is telling faculty that it’s financially ‘untenable’ for the university to keep on paying extortionate access fees for academic journals. It’s suggesting that faculty make their research publicly available, switch to publishing in open access journals and consider resigning from the boards of journals that don’t allow open access.”

23 April 60 Permalink

infoneer-pulse:

According to the company, customers borrowed nearly 300,000 (295,000 to be exact) KDP Select titles in December alone, and KDP Select has helped grow the total library selection. With the $500,000 December fund, KDP authors have earned $1.70 per borrow. In response to strong customer adoption of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, Amazon says it has added a $200,000 bonus to the January KDP Select fund, raising the total pool from $500,000 to $700,000 for authors.

» via TechCrunch

Source: infoneer-pulse

19 January 60 emergentfutures Permalink

1: Here Come The Embargoes! - Publishers and other content creators are looking for ways to push people towards their revenue streams (namely, to buy the book or movie).

2: A Shift to Community over Collection - While some of this is based on content being under siege from the previous prediction, I feel that it will be an impetus to revamp the form and function of the library.

3: Overdrive gets competition - I’m mildly shocked that they didn’t get direct competition last year, but I think this year could see a viable competitor to Overdrive.

These are interesting, but I e g miss the potential political impact when the uncertain financial situation really trickles down to city level. It could mean a boost for the libraries but it could also mean bust, depending on how libraries are selling themselves to politicians.

11 January 13 Permalink

infoneer-pulse:

As reported earlier this year, Amazon and digital content distribution service OverDrive are teaming up to bring Kindle library lending to thousands of public libraries across the U.S. That partnership, rumored to be launching this month, has apparently now gone live in select locations.

According to postings on Amazon’s Kindle Forum, some users are already seeing this option in the Seattle area. A page on Amazon’s website describing the new service has also gone live.

» via TechCrunch

21 September 213 infoneer-pulse Permalink

infoneer-pulse:

Major research libraries in Britain have told the two largest journal publishers that they will not renew their “big deals” with them if they do not make significant real-terms price reductions.

Research Libraries UK, which includes the Russell Group university libraries, as well as Britain’s national libraries and Trinity College Library Dublin, have told Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell that they will not renew their current deals when they expire at the end of this year unless the concession is made.

Big deals involve libraries paying a blanket fee for electronic access to a publisher’s entire journal catalog. They were initially welcomed by librarians when they were first introduced a decade ago. However, David Prosser, RLUK’s executive director, said consistent above-inflation price increases and the current squeeze on library budgets meant that big deals were accounting for an ever-greater proportion of libraries’ budgets and were no longer affordable.

» via Inside Higher Ed

I think this is the start of a fight which really is about the future for both the publishers and the academic libraries. If they collaborate both could survive by redining their boundaries and responsibilities and see to that they provide real value to researchers and the universities, but if they don’t it becomes a zero-sum game where just one of them will survive. The fourth scenario is of course that they both find themselves irrelevant by a transformed structure of universities and the research process.

It will however be a an interesting struggle!

19 August 77 infoneer-pulse Permalink