Last week I led an ALA delegation to New York to meet with a number of key players in the publishing ecosystem. Overall, I left town feeling a bit more optimistic, although I recognize that libraries are in the midst of a digital revolution that we will be navigating for years to come.
Our biggest meeting—at least in terms of number of participants—took place at Penguin. We had an excellent opportunity to talk about library ebook lending with individuals at the highest levels at Penguin. The meeting included John Makinson, chairman and chief executive of the Penguin Group (Worldwide), David Shanks, CEO of Penguin Group (USA), and Susan Petersen Kennedy, president of Penguin Group (USA). Other key executives of Penguin Group (USA) also participated in the meeting, including Tim McCall and Erica Glass, our regular liaisons at the company. For ALA, a full delegation was in force. This included Barbara Stripling (president-elect), Robert Wolven (cochair of the Digital Content and Libraries Working Group), Keith Michael Fiels (executive director), Alan S. Inouye (program manager, Digital Content Initiative), and Marijke Visser (assistant director of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy).
The Penguin executives are quite knowledgeable about library ebook lending issues and are clearly committed to the library market. Our spirited conversation focused on how libraries can best serve the interests of readers in an increasingly digital age. Indeed, Penguin leadership expressed their support for the essential purposes of libraries. They also told us that they are vexed about any conflict with the library community. This was a very substantive discussion. Of course, we did not agree on every point, but we left with avenues to consider and pursue for both Penguin and ALA.
Various members of the ALA delegation engaged in other meetings. During this trip, ALA representatives met separately with representatives of Random House, Hachette, Scholastic, Rosen Publishing, the Book Industry Study Group, and the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. Some of these meetings focused on the library ebook lending issue, but others emphasized broader themes. Notable among them was how important school libraries are in the K–12 education ecosystem and how to emphasize this role with local, regional, and national policy decision makers. One of the unintended benefits of the multiple ALA leadership visits to New York, initially motivated by the library ebook lending problem, is that once we are in the room with leaders in the publishing industry or related organizations, additional common areas of interest emerge. These lead to new opportunities for ALA and the library community.
In terms of library ebook lending, a number of ideas arose. In several meetings we discussed how libraries might be able to provide new ways to enable access (and sales) for publisher titles without compromising our values. One such existing mechanism is the deployment of the buy-it-now button—when a library user placed on the waiting list for an ebook is given the option to purchase the title—with some of the proceeds from purchases that patrons opt to make benefiting the library. Based on the work of ALA’s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group, other business model components were discussed and some interest was expressed by publishers.
Another common theme was how libraries typically provide ebook access through intermediaries. We all recognize that these intermediaries provide valuable services. Still, both publishers and libraries experience significant challenges in how library ebooks are made available and these challenges merit increased attention. Perhaps the most notable issue for libraries is ownership and control of library user data; the ability of intermediaries to collect and analyze such data; and the subsequent use of the data for marketing purposes.
Our days in New York coincided with the opening of baseball season. I’d say that we “hit a clean single up the middle” in our series of meetings. The discussions represent definite progress, but there are other batters to come in the inning, and then many innings in the game. We all know that we need to stay in the game, both within ALA and through allied efforts across the library community. While nobody can predict the future with certainty, I am expecting to see a double—or even better—in this spring season. Batter up!
Maureen Sullivan
ALA President