2024 Cheers n Jeers

Updated—oh, we’re not done.

The end of the year is upon us, and that means only one thing. Well, it means many things, of course, but only one for ReadersFirst. It’s time for our annual Cheers n Jeers, where good things that have happened in library digital content land are celebrated and troubling things are called out with heaping helpings of snark.

Update:

Thanks to my RF Working Group colleague Lisa, who adds the following:

[CHEERS to Audible for adding (still more) content to libraries through Palace. Your original content is greatly appreciated and attracts customers who know your name and the quality of your work to the library digital content experience. May your authors thrive! We’ll help.

While we’re talking Palace, CHHERS to our RF partners in Canada. Vancouver and Edmonton for have added this new e-book platform for library customers in their cities. Amazon, Audible, new collection models, tens of thousands of free quality titles, at the fingertips—cheers, indeed.

CHEERS to the Internet Archive (IA) for rebuilding after multiple cyber attacks (and, of course, JEERS to the hackers. You want to stop access to the Wayback Machine and so many great resources? You’re no heroes. May your names and actions be buried by history—oh, wait the IA is making sure your actions aren’t. ).

Thanks, Lisa!

While we’re talking IA, CHEERS for a brave stand on CDL. You were up against billions in corporate money and digital copyright laws unbalanced in favor of those who seek only profit at the expense of the preservation of the intellectual record and against the “Progress of Science and useful Arts.” What about the hundreds of thousands of books that don’t have a current digital license and that will be ignored or forgotten because some corporate type thinks those works have no value but best to hold onto them just in case? IA, long may you thrive and keep those works available as long as you can.

Maybe we need some way to find reclaim them and find commercial value for authors—oh, wait, darn it, I forget HUGE CHEERS for Paul Crosby (of Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University) and Tessa Barrington, Airlie Lawson, and Rebecca Giblin (of Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne) for Untapped Potential. Sorry, Rebecca, “il miglior fabbro” (gender is wrong, but that’s the original quote, sorry again.)

Now back to our orginal post.]

In what may be called (once again, alas) the year of the book ban, CHEERS with bells on for all who fight everywhere for the freedom to read. Librarians, organizations, publishers, writers, attorneys, and especially caring parents and brave young readers, your courage is laudable and inspiring. In library digital land, especial thanks go the five libraries in Books Unbanned and their generous supporters who make that initiative possible: Brooklyn, Boston, LA County, San Diego, and Seattle. CHEERS, too, to the DPLA (and Lyrasis) for The Banned Book Club. Through the power of library digital books, young people all over the country have access to challenged titles, even in areas where libraries are underfunded or even non-existent, and wherever the blinkered bluenose censor holds sway to deny reading based on ideology.

A special CHEER is due to Dr Tasslyn Magnusson with PEN America and EveryLibrary for tremendous work documenting challenges and bans. There is unfortunately ever so much to track; this information allows ever so many to know the threat and to fight back against those benighted small minds who want to tell everyone else what they can’t read.

An equally loud JEER for the groups and states pushing their narrow-minded, undemocratic, and anti-American banning agenda. Since when does “freedom” consist of taking away freedom from everyone else? The loudest of JEERS for the 18 states— Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia—filing amicus briefs in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reduce libraries to the choked mouthpieces for local governments, taking selection away from library professionals who desire to serve ALL. You want to support a county that just coincidentally “weeded” Isabelle Wilkerson’s magisterial Caste and books on the KKK and on Rosa Parks? Oh well, at least you’ve exploded the lie that the censors are after “pornography.” You are sentenced in absentia to read the United States Constitution and write a 500 word essay on how it refutes every page of Project 2025. No using generative AI to help!

Speaking of AI, JEERS to Midwest Tapes’ HOOPLA for importing “a plethora of irrelevant, seemingly AI-generated, and even pirated materials that often differ greatly from the choices that librarians make for their communities.” With people attacking library collections, and libraries themselves, in unprecedented ways, our reputation for providing quality collections must be even more jealously guarded then ever before. A bunch of dreck in a popular service doesn’t help. Some of the selections have all the authority of a debunked lie on X. We shouldn’t have to curate your collection for you. Stop the slop. OverDrive, RF hears reports that you aren’t labelling titles in your catalog as A.I. “created,” thus creating more work for selection librarians to sort out the chaff. No jeers for you now, but fix it.

CHEERS to the publishers who are experimenting with new models for library ebook acquisition, especially those that are working with DPLA and IPG to offer ownership rather than licensing of content. Between high demand and limited budget increases, as recently documented again by Library Futures’ Jennie Rose Halperin and Laura Crossett, libraries are increasingly finding ebooks unsustainable, our collections circumscribed by constant re-licensing and high prices. CHEERS to the many publishers, often medium or even small in size, that offer reasonable costs to libraries on good terms. This content, often high in quality, is perhaps our best current hope for developing collections anything like the richness we offer in print. While we are about it, let’s give two cheers for one of the Big 5, Penguin Random House, for offering a perpetual as well as a metered option for audiobooks. Even that helps. Want the full three cheers, PRH? How about that option in ebooks?

Speaking of unsustainable, continued JEERS with a raspberry on the side to the BIG 5 for your digital prices for libraries. For hundreds on years, libraries have paid fair prices for millions of copies in print, and you’ve all done fine. Now suddenly our limited digital acquisitions are going to cannibalize your profits and drive you into bankruptcy, impoverishing your authors? And you have the crust to blame us for author earnings? It ain’t us. Where is all that money going? JEERS to you, too, for unleashing your myrmidons, the AAP, to get a small number of legislators to use procedural tricks to thwart the people’s will to pass fair ebook laws in various states. The AAP at least is simply doing its job. Where is their money coming from?

Let’s end with a CHEER, for the states that will once again introduce legislation using consumer protection and procurement laws to get fair (print equivalent) ebook terms. Even states that convince legislators to conduct an investigation and ask pointed questions of large publishers (and thanks again to the many other publishers that do offer fair terms to libraries) can help. We can’t expect federal legislation under the incoming administration. It isn’t, however, up to you alone. Librarians, put the limited money into titles that offer some reasonable “Bang for the book.” Let’s say it with our wallets. If we keep paying outrageous rates for content that the publishers price thinking we’ll just keep shoveling public money into the corporate trough, we’ll can’t blame them for our woes.

Happy holidays to all in a time that will be a challenge for libraries and their values. CHEERS for and to all in libraries who meet that challenge: staff, trustees, friends, and readers. There will be setbacks. We will prevail. As the poet says, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”