Unaffordable prices, an inability to buy eBooks due to a refusal to sell, bundling of unwanted titles in packages, and restrictions on research copying all affect access to eBooks in all types of libraries.
Confidentiality clauses in contracts between publishers and universities are also making understanding how the eBook market functions more challenging, and obscuring whether public money is being well-spent.
The #ebooksos campaign has successfully highlighted via the BBC and the Guardian the issues faced by the education and research sectors in accessing and using e-Books. The same issues are also being faced by public libraries across Europe.
This session will explore in depth the acute difficulties faced not just by higher education, but also by public libraries, caused by publishers’ pricing and licensing practices, and discuss possible solutions, including the potential to solve many of the problems with legal solutions in copyright law that allow Controlled Digital Lending.
It will also include information about the Knowledge Rights 21 Programme (KR21), an initiative led by Stichting IFLA Foundation, setting out its aim to achieve and implement reforms to copyright law, regulation and practice that enable knowledge institutions to provide significantly greater possibilities to access and use copyright works.
Working with public, national, educational, health and research libraries, universities and the wider access to knowledge movement, KR21 aims to promote copyright reform at the European and national levels, and through its work leave a lasting legacy that influences similar developments elsewhere in the world.
Programme:
15:00 Welcome and introduction - Stephen Wyber (IFLA)
15:15 The perfect storm? Pandemics, Publishers and #ebooksos Johanna Anderson (#eBookSoS)
15:35 Empowering Libraries Through Controlled Digital Lending Chris Freeland (Internet Archive)
15:55 Does European Copyright Law already allow Controlled Digital Lending? - Benjamin White (LIBER Copyright & Legal Matters Working Group)
Our expert speakers are:
Johanna Anderson @hohojanna, Subject Librarian, University of Gloucestershire and founder of the #eBookSoS campaign
Chris Freeland @chrisfreeland, Chris is Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, working in support of the organization's mission to provide "Universal access to all knowledge." Before joining the Internet Archive Chris was an Associate University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri managing the University Libraries' digital initiatives and related services. His research explores the intersections of science and technology in a cultural heritage context, having published and presented on a variety of topics relating to the use of new media and emerging technologies in libraries and museums.
Benjamin White, Chair of the Copyright and Legal Working Group of the Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER), Researcher, Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management, University of Bournemouth.
Steven Wyber, Manager Policy and Advocacy at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, where he works to help strengthen advocacy across the library field, at all levels. He is particularly focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and oversees work on copyright, heritage, internet governance, and human rights.
The event will be moderated by Stephen Wyber, IFLA
Know your rights; the key to E-book access
