The eBook Revolution: Policy Issues in a Changing Market
Keywords:
libraries, ebooks, policies, publishersAbstract
The technological advances of our time provide vast opportunities to develop and improve existing services and access to information. However, with new opportunities come new challenges. In 2012, public libraries faced many challenges when the Big Six publishers (Macmillan, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, and Simon & Schuster) made abrupt and drastic changes to their policies, restricting libraries‘ access to the ebooks they publish. This paper explores the positions of the major stakeholders involved in this policy issue: publishers, public libraries, library patrons, authors, and booksellers. The emerging roles of small publishers and self-publishers are discussed, along with effects of the policy changes, current initiatives to resolve the issue, and the future outlook.
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