Nick,
I totally agree with you about the future disintermediation of publishing and how badly it could damage the quality of output if publishers aren't able to make a profit and therefore can no longer act to provide some assurance of quality. However I don't believe that libraries paying for public access to e-books for brief periods, on a one user per book model (with DRM) will hit the publishers as hard as they claim. If, as they seem to suggest, DRM is not a reliable means of protecting e-books from piracy then the onus is on them as the publishers to improve it or replace it with something that works (after all it's the banks who are liable if someone commits credit card fraud because their security features have demonstrably failed).
Despite their protestations to the contrary it is vastly cheaper to publish books electronically and the market is growing exponentially - in these circumstances I don't feel that it is asking too much for us to request similar terms for e-books as have been negotiated for hardcopy.
Phil Jones
ICT & Information Coordinator
Coventry Libraries and Information Services
Floor 2, West Orchards House
28-34 Corporation Street
Coventry
CV1 1GF
Tel: 024 7683 2329
Fax: 024 7683 2470
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Visit us at www.coventry.gov.uk/libraries
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