There's been a flurry of e-mails on the SLIS list about a new e-book policy of HarperCollins being pushed through their e-book vendor, Overdrive Books. Here's an article on it from Publishers Weekly and some hot, steaming writer's vitriol about it from Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing.net.
The furor, in case you didn't want to read the above links, is over the fact that, unlike most publishers, HarperCollins will sell libraries e-books to "loan" out to patrons. Unfortunately, the deal with the devil is that libraries' license for the e-book ends after 26 loans or one year. After that, the libraries must re-purchase the license. For librarians grappling with shrinking collections budgets and the growing demand of their patrons for online materials access, it's got to seem like a real Catch-22.
I really have nothing new to say about this issue, because after only a week of the knowledge of this new policy, librarian and author reactions have been loud and many. This event, though, does drive home how important it is that I pay attention in my Information Policy class, and how sad it is that my class only has 7 people in it. This sort of issue is not going to go away, especially as the Digital Rights Management Act matures and reacts. Complicating the issue are new copyleft licenses (like Creative Commons) that would not go through a traditional publisher, but might come through the libraries as loanable items.
It's all kind of fascinating, really.
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