public library

Censorship: Who Decides, and How?

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This post by Dani Greer originally appeared on the Little Pickle Press blog on 6/25/14.

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about book banning and censorship, and posed the question: who should be the censor?

When I was growing up, it was my mother, who was German and not particularly well-read. I grew up with books like Struwwelpeter which in my not-so-humble opinion should be banned from the planet. But my mother, who has a quite common German sense of humor (i.e. different from American humor), adores this book and continues to buy it – now for her great-grandchildren. We have argued the point, and she will never understand my view that the book is violent and offensive, even as I can’t understand where she sees any humor in the collection of stories.

Now multiply that scenario by many books, and countless families, within many community schools and libraries and you can see the challenges of finding acceptable middle ground. Because, yes, a compromise must be reached in any arena in which funding is supplied by the general public. When taxpayers are involved, the greatest number of people must be pleased by their joint expenditures. It’s perhaps an impossibility in actuality, but my point is, that should be the goal of government. I know this stance will offend many small groups on the extreme right and left of an issue, but stick with me for a moment and pretend you agree that the best way to handle censorship is by pleasing the bell curve.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Little Pickle Press blog.

 

Smashwords and OverDrive to Bring 200,000+ Indie Ebooks to 20,000+ Public Libraries

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This post by Mark Coker originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 5/20/14.

Imagine if your indie ebook was purchasable by thousands of public libraries around the globe. Now imagine no more.

Smashwords today announced an agreement to supply more than 200,000 titles to OverDrive, the world’s largest library ebook platform.

OverDrive powers the ebook procurement and checkout systems for 20,000 public libraries around the world, including 90% of US public libraries.

This agreement marks a watershed moment for indie authors, libraries and library patrons around the world.

It’s also a big deal for thousands of small independent presses around the globe who now have a convenient onramp into the OverDrive network.

Millions of library patrons will now have access to the amazing diversity and quality of the Smashwords catalog.

At a time when many large publishers are charging libraries high prices for ebooks (front list ebooks from Big 5 publishers can cost libraries $80, and even backlist ebooks can cost libraries $20-40), Smashwords authors and publishers are stepping in to supply thousands of affordably priced, library-friendly ebooks. Faced with the option of purchasing a single James Patterson novel for around $40.00, or ten thrillers from today’s most popular indie authors at $4.00 each, libraries now have exciting new options to build patron-pleasing ebook collections.

To help librarians streamline collection development, in the weeks ahead OverDrive and Smashwords will create curated buy-lists lists libraries can use to purchase the most popular indie authors and titles. Libraries will soon have the option, for example, to purchase the top 100 YA fantasy novels (approximate price: ~$400), or the top 1,000 most popular contemporary romances (~$4,000) or top 200 complete series across multiple categories (~$2,000), or the top 200 thrillers, mysteries, epic fantasies or memoirs. With most of our bestsellers priced priced at or under $4.00, you can do the math to appreciate how incredibly affordable these collections will be. We’re going to have fun slicing and dicing.

Our lists will measure title popularity by aggregating sales data from across the Smashwords distribution network. Indie authors: If you needed yet another reason to fully distribute all your titles to all retailers via the Smashwords distribution network, now you have it. Stand up and have your sales counted because we want to help libraries purchase the greatest diversity of high-quality ebooks across multiple genres and categories.

Here are a couple additional stats to help you appreciate the massive scale of the OverDrive network:

 

Click here to read the full post on the Smashwords blog.

 

Save Our Stacks

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This post by Rebecca Schuman originally appeared on Slate on 5/12/14.

It’s not about the books. It’s about the books representing the last place on campus where intellectual contemplation thrives.

If a college library moves 170,000 of its books to storage, to make room for sumptuous new administrative offices—which is happening at Maine’s Colby College—does it still count as a library? Or, as an impassioned open letter from concerned faculty attests, is it no longer “a place for reflection and deep thought, research and scholarship,” but rather merely “a waiting room” sans books and a reference librarian, and surrounded by temples to the new gods of the American university?

The Colby administration argues that the renovations are there to help the students, providing them with more study space. The student newspaper is less convinced, headlining an op-ed “Sorry, Your New Library Still Sucks.”

The Colby case is but one example of a widespread move to re-appropriate library space in the age of digitization. From the University of Nebraska to the University of Edinburgh, from the University of Nevada–Las Vegas to Kent State, knowledge repositories the world over may soon have to change their names, because the liber will be increasingly hard to come by. In fact, the only major library to “resist” this trend—the New York Public Library—did so only reluctantly, and out of capitulation to a passionate, organized, grass-roots campaign.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.