Hello All! Sorry I was not able to participate on video or audio last night. My name is K. Antigone Trowbridge (call me KAT). I am an American librarian living in Abu Dhabi in the UAE and working for the British International School of Abu Dhabi. I am actually not a teacher (I am/was a lawyer in my first life) so my interests expand beyond the school library a bit. I have been trying to work out how to provide books/ebooks for children and adults in Abu Dhabi. But there is no open library for the general masses available here, though they did open a Children's library just before Covid shut everything down. So I have been turning to ebooks as our city school board won't let us exchange any materials with students, including books - even when we isolate them.
Last night there was mention of my use of the word 'accessibility' so I would like to clarify. I am talking about access. My school has numerous students who are well off. But we also provide free education for many of the less well paid staff (that and free accommodation is how it becomes valuable for many expats to make Abu Dhabi home). That creates a pretty clear divide between the haves and have-nots. I don't want that divide to exist when it comes to access to reading materials so I believe in a strong library culture. But I am having a very difficult time building that during covid with publishers. I have tried appealing directly in order to do something like the Texas program we heard about last night. I can't get them to return emails so I am assuming they are round filed. Because of that I consider cost/terms of ebook "purchases" for libraries (school et al) an access issue. I apologize for stumbling into the word of art "accessibility" which does apply to a different set of concerns - also valid, but not my current point.
My suggestion last night is one I have been trying to raise with ALA for a while. We have very little clout with publishers as libraries. One thing though we DO have is control over the awards committees that recommend books - and for youth books, having a Newbery or Caldecott medal seems to bring publishers much more trade on their titles. So I don't think it is unreasonable to ask our colleagues who are doing book award committees to add criteria to their list that reflects the availability of the books to Libraries/School Libraries. For me this is ebooks, though honestly a print book with a huge price tag is also a deterrent to purchase (how many libraries bought the 35$ HP illuminated books, I wonder.)
I have a tiny budget so I have committed as a responsible steward of resources to not "purchase" books for our library that are time or checkout limited because these are essentially just rentals. I had to bend that rule during Covid for some fan favorites, but it breaks my heart to give in. If there were ANY other way these students could get books they would read for pleasure, I would do it. But our children's library isn't set up for tweens/teens for ANY books so I know there are students who rely on what I can add to the school library.
Full disclosure, I also wrote the awards people I could find in UK as well. The Scottish National Trust, in their ever lovely manner, sent a thoughtful email saying they would take it under advisement. Others gave me the "it isn't our problem, it sounds like a YOU problem." In my UK school librarian's group, we agreed to try to bring this up with our 'trade organization' CILIP/SLA with the idea that maybe we could have them encourage members (members are organizations not people) to add such criteria to book award juries.
As an example, our English Department wanted to buy 80-100 eBook licenses for the Bone Sparrow this year since we cannot use our class sets. TBS is an excellent book, well worth reading. However, the publisher is not selling the eBook (only renting for 24 months) and the cost is 45USD per book (for my region which may be anomaly.... I welcome more data on this.)
In any event, thank you for considering this. I look forward to working on this.
Antigone/KAT
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Kathryn Trowbridge
Librarian
British International School Abu Dhabi
She/Her/Hers
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Original Message:
Sent: Feb 01, 2021 09:26 AM
From: Stephen Spohn
Subject: February 2 Core Ebooks Interest Group Meeting - Virtual Introductions
Greetings everyone,
I hope that we will see many of you at the upcoming Core Ebooks Interest Group Meeting. Please see below for important information about the meeting and a very quick chore for you!
The Meeting
February 2
1 - 2 pm ET / noon - 1 pm CT / 11 to noon MT / 10 to 11 am PT
Register online
The Agenda
We have a very ambitious agenda for just one hour!
- Quick introductions
- Virtual introductions (see below)
- Digital Content Pricing for Library Working Group update
- Readers First update
- SimplyE update
- DPLA Exchange update
- Legislative updates
- Something new: Blossom Bilingual Ebooks
Virtual Introductions - ACTION ITEM
Please take some time to introduce yourself and to address any of the above agenda items either before or after the meeting. Please copy and paste the questions below into a reply to this post along with your answers. Your top two interests will help us to guide our activities in the next couple years.
- Name:
- Title:
- Organization:
- My Role: Author, Distributor, Library, Publisher, Something Else
- My Ebook Activities/Updates:
- URL To Learn More:
- Top Two Interests:
- Licensing models and pricing
- Research and data analysis
- Accessibility of digital content and platforms
- Curation and the patron experience with digital books
- Difficult to find digital content
- SimplyE mobile app for ebooks
- Archival access to digital content
The Interest Group
All are welcome and encouraged to join us in the Core Ebooks Interest Group. You just need a free ALA Connect account to get setup if you aren't already an ALA member.
With apologies for those who might receive multiple messages, please do cross-post. We have likely lost more than a couple people during the transition from ASGCLA to Core, and it may take them a year or two to find their way back to us.
Cheers!
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Stephen Spohn
Co-convener, Core Ebooks Interest Group
sspohnjr@gmail.com | 978.799.1518 | http://poweroflibraries.org/
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