Libraries That Need To Print And Then Rescan Ebooks Just To Lend Them
from the thank-you-copyright dept
The folks over at Against Monopoly have pointed out a rather ridiculous situation that has come about thanks to the restrictions that some publishers are putting on ebooks that are offered to libraries. With regular books, once a library has purchased the book, it can lend it to other libraries to pass on to patrons with no problem, but thanks to the restrictions placed on ebooks, such things are not allowed. So if a library wants to do an inter-library loan on an ebook, it's forced to print out the ebook, scan it back into a computer and then send the scanned copy to another library. For something that's supposed to be a lot more efficient, it would appear that the ebook, thanks to publisher restrictions, is actually a lot more troublesome.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Not quite...
Follow and read the link given in the Against Monopoly article. The library doesn't have to scan the article, it is also allowed to send the actual printed article to the other library. What the library with the on-line subscription is apparently not allowed to do is to directly hook up other libraries to that on-line subscription.
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Re:
The point of that comment was that things aren't quite the way Mike described them. And they aren't, are they?
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ORLY?
Actual quote (bold added):
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The licensor grants the subscriber the right to use articles from subscribed content in the case of ScienceDirect as source material for interlibrary loans subject to the following conditions:
* The ILL request comes from an academic or other non-commercial, non-corporate research library located in the same country as the subscriber.
* The requested article is printed by the subscriber and mailed, faxed or transmitted by Ariel (or a similar ILL system) to the requesting library. "
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Re: ORLY?
ORLY. Just exactly how does "mailed" imply FORCED TO SCAN?
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Re: Re: ORLY?
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Re: Re: Re: ORLY?
Uh, I hate to tell you this genius but mail isn't electronic. "Mail" is different from "e-mail" in that way.
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So..
Why? Probably because the publisher wants it to be difficult, to discourage sharing of the text I guess.
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Freight
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Re: Freight
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Simple Solution
- The best that humanity has created, for hundreds of years, is available for the cost of a download, at the above sources.
- IMHO, Libraries could augment their budget and popularity by preparing CD's (for loan or sale) with content from the above sources.
- Skip the modern stuff. Let only the wealthy buy and see if the authors/publishers can financially survive in that niche.
- For the rest of us, wait until time sorts out which modern stuff is trash and which will be classic literature.
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Kill More Trees
under the stealth of darkness and I would
rather have the printed copy of the text.
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Why not
I can only assume the problem is that there are SO MANY e-book subscription places that the total price becomes prohibitive.
One repository, one price (a decent one too).
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Re: Why not
It'll make stopping ebooks very simple.
Yess... do that.
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Re: Why not by Evil Mike
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A librarian's response
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Re: Re: ORLY?
> from "Printing" to a .pdf
Or printing it out, scanning it back in, doing OCR on the scanned version, then emailing a nice pristine ascii file of the text...
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OK, OK..
I wonder if 'printing to pdf' would still be considered printing? They don't actually say that it has to be printed onto dead trees..
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Copying vs. Lending
I think the best way for them to handle the situation, stay electronic and yet reduce the copying is to assign each book per subscription with a unique serial number. When the library wants to load it out to another library from a subscription, they loan the serial number so there is still one copy only (as in the first library cannot use it until they get it back from the second). It has to be "checked" out from the subscription service.
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Feed Error
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Easier Method
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What? NOT add more shelves?
I mean - what was Featherbedding all about if it wasn't assuring that technology didn't destroy everything we've worked for. If libraries don't grow, what will the workers do that would have built the new ones? What about the workers that built shelves? And bookmarks! And what about the workers that pushed the carts down the stacks reshelving books? All you technologists thinks about is 'destroy destroy.'
Oh, forgot to mention that I'm from California, the state where public employee unions have greatly aided in creating the biggest state budget deficit of any state in world history!
OK now with that out of my system, I agree that printing to PrimoPDF or some other .xyz to .pdf utility should solve this problem. The Elsevier policy specifically allows email (Ariel or similar system).
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Re: What? NOT add more shelves?
And regular mail too.
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