At
Book Expo America 2013, the presenters from Douglas County CO and their
partner Califa, did an exceptional presentation which was eye opening,
to say the least.
The
Douglas County Library System has bought and installed their own server
to disseminate ebooks which they buy (yes, buy) from the publishers
directly. The publishers they are dealing with are cooperating fully,
allowing both the purchase and dissemination of their backlists and
current publications through the DCL system. Douglas County continues to
work with aggregators such as Overdrive for popular and brand name
authors, but also maintains an in-house set of e-files that are not
subject to the whims of an outside entity, thereby creating a base of
e-books which are considered to be the property of the library---an
archive of useable files either direct from publishers, along with
access to the Gutenberg project and any of the other accessible e-book
collections springing up around the internet.
They
have partnered with Workman to buy their entire e-book backlist, as
well as buying selectively from other publishers, and at present have
over 27,000 titles in their
ebook collection. They do work with the publishers by including a “buy
now” button on all their ebooks, and still allow only one checkout per
patron at a time. Their publishing partners include Akashic , Crabtree,
Poisoned Pen, Rose, Smashwords, Dzanc, Sourcebook and Tyndale, among
many others. They receive an average of 40% discount on their print
purchases and ask for similar discounts on their electronic purchases.
They don’t always get it, but they do get it often enough to make it
workable. They have integrated their catalog to include all titles in
one listing, so that a single search could produce titles from their
“publishing partners”, Overdrive, or physical books. Have a look at
their downloadables page on their catalog : http://douglascountylibraries.org/downloadables
To
put it simply, Douglas County has radically changed “the rules of the
game”. And Califa, a consortium which was launched with a Library
Services and Technology Act grant from the California State Library in
July, 2003, (as many California libraries were being denied funding due
to the state of California’s budget at the time) has extended the
playing field even more. They have just launched their own answer to
the e-book question, and e-book project called Enki, (named after the
Sumerian deity of mischief, creativity and intelligence) which uses Open
Source software to extend and amplify the work that Douglas County has
begun. With Enki, the process becomes useable for ILL, among other
benefits, but more importantly allows access to the software that would
otherwise be prohibitive, even for those libraries which might be able
to afford their own server. Here’s a link to their explanation of the
E-book project: http://califa.org/ebooks.php which explains it far better than I can here.
Now,
I’m in no way an IT person, nor did I understand much of the computer
jargon that peppered the questions and answers that followed the
presentation. But I do know enough to believe that this is the first
experiment since the inception of e-books in libraries that is showing
another path for libraries to take which will effectively return control
of our collections to our own hands. And it couldn’t come soon enough,
in my opinion. Bravo to both Douglas County and Califa…and stay tuned.
They have only just begun, and the future for libraries looks very
different from the way it looked even six months ago!
For more information, here are some contacts that are happy to discuss this with all comers:
For purchasing logistics, discounts, and acquisition information: Sharon Nemechek: snemechek@dclibraries.org or Rochelle Logan: rlogan@dclibraries.org
For technical questions, including DRM, filei formats and processes: Monique Sendz: msendze@dclibraries.org
Any of the above can also be reached by phone: (303) 791-7323.
- Doris @Central
