Books for Everyone!

In recent times there has been a lot of discussion about ebooks, platforms, licensing etc. - but what about audiobooks?

There is something nice about listening to someone read a book to you; so long as the reader does not have an annoying voice it is a rather pleasant experience. I have recently come back from a rather long road trip and for me road trips are all about good snack food and really good book/s. Audio books are a pleasure because I am able to take something mundane and boring and make it something interesting and even enjoyable. This got me thinking: what about those people that cannot read books?
In the guardian there was a story of France leading the way on audiobooks for blind or visually impaired people, so kudos to the Association Valentin-Haüy (AVH) for making it happen.

Working in a rather specialised academic library there are very limited academic resources for those with visual impairment or other disability. In France in 2006 a law was passed requiring publishers to make their source available to certified organisations, enabling the latter to transcribe books into sound or braille - or digitally and paper - and to distribute them.

In Australia, Vision Australia has been working tirelessly to improve services for those with vision impairment and have a collection of fiction and non-fiction resources available on their website. Unfortunately, there is still a long way to go in terms of academic resources.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the public library that introduced me to the joy of audiobooks. Back in my high school days, when there were no more copies of Harry Potter on the shelf the friendly librarian showed me to their audio collection of Harry Potter read by Stephen Fry (sample here).

Please comment below on your experiences.

-Gabby

Learn More about Licensing

Earlier this month, Kate Davis posted about the massive leap forward in eBooksover the past 12 months from the perspective of an end-user. The past 12 months have also seen a number of leaps in eBook products available to libraries, new pricing models, and usability for eBook users, but not always in the direction libraries would prefer.

Librarians are working more than ever to understand and meet user expectations, but the products available to libraries don't always provide the best fit to meet these needs whether because the interface lacks in usability, or because licensing is unfavourable. Publisher-initiated changes including the move to restrict eBook download to the library premises in the UK (Overdrive) and limited checkouts per title (HarperCollins)have made headlines not just in the library media, but in mainstream media.

Reaction from librarians has ranged from anger to resignation that the game has changed. The majority in the middle, however, see a role for librarians to to be a partner with vendors rather than merely a customer as models evolves, and to advocate for better licensing terms that benefit both library users, and publishers. 

Librarians at every level can get involved, from learning more about licensing on a practical level, to following broader trends that will impact libraries and the way content is delivered in the future. Licensing of eBooks is not just the domain of eResource librarians, but of every librarian that works with users. Initiatives like Library Renewal in the US will produce research on future content models. Closer to home, monitor intellectual property aspects of draft agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the work of the Australian Digital Alliance and the Australian Libraries' Copyright Committee. On an international level, IFLA has been working to develop a Draft Treaty on Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives at WIPO.

In many countries, including Australia, local publishers are underrepresented in the eBook market. If a publisher you purchase from does not yet offer eBooks, meet with them. Work with them to develop a business model that would work for you and your users. Purchase materials in a range of languages and in accessible formats. 

I've had a number of conversations with librarians in different countries about eBooks over the last few months. There are very few places where libraries are not already investing in eBooks. Awareness and engagement with content and licensing issues is far higher than I recall it being when I last worked at the reference desk. Now is the time to turn awareness into action and to secure the role of electronic content in libraries. 

 

Fiona Bradley is based in the UK as a Programme Coordinator for IFLA and tweets as @Fiona_Bradley

What about the books?

 

Lately I have been thinking about a technology that was invented quite a while back, books. Wow, people must think, a librarian thinking about books, how exciting. 


But as recent events demonstrate, such as the outcry over the redevelopment at the University of Sydney, there's a curious thing about books: people are very attached to them. Not even an attachment to particular books, but rather to books as a conceptual whole, and I would really like to understand why. 


Three years ago, Ars Technica published an article on the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey from the UK, according to this survey print "books have the highest "attachment" rating of any leisure media activity. People are more attached to their books than they are to their satellite television, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, social networks, video games, blogs, DVDs, and P2P file-swapping." But recent reports show that just four years after they started selling e-books, Amazon is now selling more e-books than print books. 


A similar contradiction has been shown by the illogical nature of the borrowing protests at the University of Sydney in which the very act of having to arrange a special protest to 'rescue' these books is admitting that they don't ordinarily use them. 


The idea of books being mistreated will set any scholar aghast, except perhaps Dorothy Parker who so famously wrote that "this is a not a novel to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." But what is it about books that people hold in such reverence?  Are they not in fact a perfect demonstrate of mass production, one of the earliest I should imagine, in which hundreds of thousands of identical copies can be pumped out into the market. With the exception of books that are genuinely rare or historically significant, books are really little more than cereal boxes but filled with words and ideas rather than your morning cornflakes. I think the value of books is really about those little ideas inside the eye-catching paper casing, and I think the upset is because people have forgotten that unlike cereal, you don't need a physical object to contain ideas. 


My own experience has been patchy, with periods of a deep love of the physical presence of books and the academic wallpaper they provide. But the longer I work professionally with books the less importance I place in the objects themselves and a period of buying and selling secondhand books really demonstrated the arbitrary nature of the value we place on them as objects. 


When people feel books are under threat, the fear in their response is because they fear the knowledge those books contain is similarly under threat.  People seem to me to be forgetting that the purpose of libraries isn't to be a shrine to the idea of the book, but rather a place to share knowledge in all it's forms and any people never seem to know the many creative ways libraries are cooperating through both digital, inter-lending and repository initiatives to ensure that members of any single library have access to knowledge that transcends the walls of their own library space. I feel that to win this battle, somehow libraries need to detach the concept of knowledge and the experience of exploring that knowledge from the object of a book and the physical experience of reading a book in order for people to understand the opportunities that the wider library community offers. 


But these are just my thoughts on why people are so attached to books, what do you think? 


Kate Byrne
Convenor ALIA Sydney