Just weeks before the American Library Association annual conference, a new ALA-sponsored report, entitled Digital Content: What’s Next?, examines how libraries are evolving in the digital revolution, from e-books, to licensing, to developments in self-publishing. The supplement also details progress made by the ALA’s Digital Content Working Group.
Contributors include Publishers Weekly contributing editor Peter Brantley, director of scholarly communication at Hypothes.is, whose piece, “The Unpackaged Book,” examines ways in which the “fundamental model of libraries, publishers, distributors, and books will need further re-engineering.”
In “Ebooks in 2013: Promises Broken, Promises Kept, and Faustian Bargains,” Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, examines the library e-book situation, concluding that the e-book status quo gravely threatens libraries’ ability fulfill their traditional roles.
The supplement is the ALA’s third on e-books and digital content, and sets up a much anticipated e-book discussion at the 2013 Annual American Library Association Conference in Chicago. At the session, entitled "ALA, Ebooks, and Digital Content: What’s Next?” the leadership of ALA’s Digital Content Working Group will provide an overview of ALA activities and plans, and a panel discussion will provide further views on “libraries as publishers and stewards of America’s digital cultural heritage.”
