Support your local library but don’t worry, they are doing OK thanks to Millennials

I love librarians and each one I have met has been a fierce treasure. So even though we are now in a digital era, the smart libraries have been keeping up making changes to continue to have an important space in communities.  When I am traveling and need to do some work, I will hang out in a public library. They have free wifi, lots of tables and quiet places, and available plugs to keep your tools charged! Ben Franklin would be proud!

Check out the article at The Christian Science Monitor for more info – https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2017/0814/Libraries-obsolete-No-way-say-Millennials

The Library ebook Situation is Appalling

This post by Michael Kozlowski originally appeared on Good Ereader on 4/20/14.

Publishers have been heavily resistant about selling their catalog of eBooks to libraries in the US and Canada. It took years of lobbying from the American Library Association and companies such as 3M and Overdrive to finally sway them over. Now, in one way or another, every major publisher has a pilot project or distributes select titles to libraries.

In 2013, both Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, which had not been selling ebooks to libraries, began pilot programs which were eventually expanded. Macmillan now sells its entire back-list of 11,000 titles to libraries nationwide and Simon & Schuster expanded its first pilot to a dozen libraries. Penguin Book Group ended its embargo policy so that all ebook titles would be available to libraries at the same time as in the consumer ones are issued. Hachette Book Group made all its ebooks available to libraries at the same time as print books. Smaller publishers such as Smashwords have also got involved in the distribution of eBooks from their wellspring of self-published content.

Major publishers still see libraries as devaluing their digital product by giving it away for free.

 

Click here to read the full post on Good Ereader.