Ottawa Community News: Libraries Take to Twitter to Talk Fair Ebook Pricing

March 30, 2016
By Jennifer McIntosh

Libraries take to Twitter to talk fair ebook pricing

The Ottawa Public Library is part of a nationwide charge for fairer ebook pricing, said library board chair and Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney.

Tierney presented a resolution at a Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in early March calling on Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to look at legislation that will deal with what he calls an unfair markup on ebook pricing for libraries.

Libraries can pay as much as three times to purchase the same ebook that the general public purchases.

Tierney said he’s pleased that the federation, which represents 2,000 member municipalities across the country, passed the resolution.

“I think it’s a clear message that some action needs to be taken,” he said.

Unfortunately, it’s not something the general public is aware of, said Tierney.

Raising awareness is why a consortium of public libraries across the country called Canadian Public Libraries for Fair Ebook Pricing are hosting a Twitter chat on March 31.

Tierney said the Ottawa, Edmonton and Toronto libraries have taken the lead on the Twitter campaign.

Vickery Bowles, a Toronto librarian, Tierney and Sharon Karr, a manager with collection access at the Edmonton library will host the chat.

The chat will be an hour long and run from 12:30 to 1:30.

Using the hashtag #fairebookprices, Tierney will be speaking on behalf of the Ottawa library.

“We aren’t looking for anything free,” Tierney said. “We just want fair pricing.”

“We are paying upwards of $125 in some cases, and that’s not for unlimited uses,” Tierney said, adding that in some cases the purchase only includes a finite number of leases.

“It’s not like you can check out multiple copies of the ebooks either,” Tierney said. “It has to be returned before another user checks it out.”

The campaign is aimed at five major multinational publishers: Harper Collins, MacMillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Simon and Schuster.

Tierney said the cost of ebooks is prohibitive since the price of one electronic copy is more than nearly 10 paperbacks.

“Ottawa has been fortunate that we have the budget to expand our electronic selection, but it has hit smaller municipalities really hard,” he said.


Source: Ottawa Community News