As the Public Library Association Conference (PLA) gets underway this week, I’m just a little jealous to be missing all the fun. Not that I don’t want to be hanging out with my mom during her spring break enjoying the great weather and checking out Washington’s first-blush cherry blossoms, I’d just like to do both!
But . . . I digress while others are already hard at work. Several members of the Digital Content and Libraries Working Group (DCWG) are taking advantage of this vibrant gathering to continue vendor meetings and increase awareness of the issues at stake. So, what’s in play?
DCWG Co-Chair and PLA Past President Sari Feldman started things off at the Opening General Session. She acknowledged PLA members and leaders involved in the DCWG, including:
- Vailey Oehlke, PLA board member and director of libraries for the Multnomah County (Oreg.) Library;
- Simon Healey, librarian II in the Government Publications Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia;
- Jamie LaRue, director of Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries;
- Robert Maier, director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners; and
- Charlie Parker, director of the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Library Consortium.
Sari also called for wider engagement across the Association to further advance the goal of increasing access to digital content through our libraries. “To deliver on our libraries’ missions and ensure access for our communities, we all need to be part of the solution—whether that’s simply educating your patrons about the publisher/vendor limitations or boldly veering from the traditional collection model for ebooks. There’s something for everyone.”
This message reverberated in the PLA show daily, in which PLA President Marcia Warner wrote: “For public libraries, maneuvering the ebook market is like driving a mountain road—exhilarating with possibility of where we’re headed, but daunting with twists and turns on the way up. It doesn’t help matters that it often feels like we’re driving without a map and reacting to contradictory road signs as they appear along the way.” Warner’s words express the frustration of many librarians.
“The DCWG is working to strengthen relationships among libraries, publishers, and distributors by opening lines of communication and emphasizing how the needs of libraries connect directly to their communities. The working group is committed to addressing the entire digital content picture, including accessibility, digitization, privacy and ethics, and public outreach,” Warner added.
With hundreds of vendors exhibiting at the PLA conference, DCWG members will be connecting with digital content intermediaries to further understand the issues at stake. ALA President Molly Raphael, President-elect Maureen Sullivan, Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels, DCWG Co-Chair Sari Feldman, and OITP Director Alan Inouye will meet with leaders from OverDrive, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and 3M. As Molly reported after meetings with publishers in February, intermediaries play a significant role in the e-reading ecosystem and need to be part of the larger digital content conversation.
Three programs at PLA also touch on ebooks:
- Getting eContent to your Customers: Challenges, Best Practices and Solutions
- ConverStation: The State of Ebooks in Public Libraries and Publishing; and
- The PLA Unconference
If you’re attending PLA, I hope you’ll share your thoughts and feedback via Twitter with the #pla12 hashtag.
As always, American Libraries will provide an inside look from the meetings in upcoming coverage. Stay posted!
LARRA CLARK is associate director of the Program on America’s Libraries for the 21st Century at the ALA Washington Office’s Office for Information Technology Policy.