On March 1, 2012, Random House
Publishing imposed a discriminatory price increase of almost 300% on
eBooks sold to libraries. An eBook title that had cost $35 in
February suddenly was priced at $105 on March 1st!
Russell Library provides downloadable
eBook service to the public through its membership in a 25 member
library consortium named LION (short for Libraries Online, Inc.).
LION contracts with a
company called Overdrive, which actually operates the downloadable service for eBooks that LION member libraries purchase.
company called Overdrive, which actually operates the downloadable service for eBooks that LION member libraries purchase.
At a meeting on March 20th, the Board
of Directors of LION unanimously voted to impose a moratorium on the
purchase of eBooks from Random House. Russell Library depends on
public funds for their operation. At a time when towns throughout
Connecticut are struggling to balance their budgets and provide some
relief to taxpayers, Russell Library and the LION member libraries
feel a responsibility to insure that dollars are spent as responsibly
as possible. We will be working with other library organizations and
with Random House to end this unfair pricing policy.
In the meantime, we plan to continue
downloadable eBook service and to expand our offerings with the
reasonable cooperation of other eBook publishers and distributors.
Survey:
The Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project is conducting an online survey of library patrons. We ask that you take the survey to help us out. All responses will be confidential. The survey should take about 15 minutes.
To take the survey, visit:
The Pew Internet Project will also be doing other general surveys of library patrons, as well as non-library-users who own e-readers or tablet computers. If you would like to participate in future surveys, sign up to be notified.
To learn more about the Pew Internet Project's research on e-reading and libraries, which is entirely free and available to the public, visit http://libraries.pewinternet.org
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