Guest Post — The Library Technology Market’s Failure to Support Controlled Digital Lending
Nathan Mealey, Michael Rodriguez, and Charlie Barlow look at the state of Controlled Digital Lending.
Guest Post — What’s Your Vision for a New Model Library?
Members of the OCLC Research Team discuss their project examining changes to library work, collections, and engagement experiences and how they will lead to the future of libraries.
Revisiting Two Perspectives on Library-based University Presses
Point: Counterpoint — today we revisit a pair of posts from Joe Esposito and Rick Anderson looking at partnerships and collaborations between university libraries and university presses.
Guest Post — What Do Library-Publisher Relations Look Like in 2022?
The AUPresses Library Relations Committee asks Peter Berkery and Mary Lee Kennedy to share their thoughts about how relations between publishers and libraries have changed.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 2: How?
After exploring why the library requires redefinition, this second part of a two-part post offers a new taxonomy for allocating library functions and roles.
Libraries and Consortia in the Context of a Publisher’s Strategy
Professional societies are facing growing resistance to place their publications in libraries. This results in these societies seeking arrangements with the largest commercial publishers, whose sway with libraries and especially library consortia is significant. Libraries have demonstrated a clear preference to work with the larger publishers over the smaller ones. This leads to increasing concentration and market power in the academic publishing industry.
A Publisher's Strategy for Patron-Driven Acquisitions (PDA)
While patron-driven acquisitions is likely to reduce publishers’ revenue in the short-term, over the long term it is likely that the revenue will be restored and even enhances. This post lists all the “PDA offsets” a publisher should consider.
Guest Post — The Library is the Brand
Libraries provide vital digital services to their host institutions. If these services carry clear library identity branding, it strengthens the library’s position in the university and enables it to secure the budget and political capital necessary to do its work.
The Vexed Problem of Libraries, Publishers, and E-books
The recent brouhaha about HarperCollins’ policy of restricting ebook circulation in libraries misses the larger point that libraries and publishers can work toward satisfying their respective interests.
Guest Post — Evaluating Publishers as Partners with Libraries and Higher Education
Rachel Caldwell presents PAPPI, a proposed matrix for determining how well a publisher or vendor aligns with the mission of libraries.
Libraries and the Contested Terrain of “Neutrality”
Are libraries “neutral”? That question is way too simplistic to serve as anything other than a political football.
Isn’t Leakage Good for Libraries?
Leakage has strengthened libraries’ negotiating position with respect to content providers. The emerging syndication model syndication offers libraries the opportunity to provide dramatically improve the research experience for their users — with a number of risks as well, including the prospect of substantially reducing their leverage at the negotiating table.
The Forbidden Forecast: Thinking About Open Access and Library Subscriptions
Green OA has not had a significant effect on subscriptions. What does — and doesn’t — that mean for subscriptions in the future?
“Recenter Library Systems on the User”: An Interview with OhioLINK’s Gwen Evans
The major US library consortium OhioLINK has created a vision for the systems that libraries use for acquiring content from publishers, managing collections, and enabling discovery. An interview about this vision with executive director Gwen Evans,
Vindicated by Its Critics: The Kent Study in Light of Other Research on Library Circulation
In 1979, a study at the University of Pittsburgh Library found that 40% of the books added in the previous six years had not circulated. 37 years later, we librarians still cite that number and many of us use it (among other factors) to justify moving in the direction of patron-driven acquisition. A critic of that practice argues that many subsequent circulation studies contradict the Kent Study. But do they?