The British Library and the Lure of Amazon
The British Library does not seem quite so placidly assured these days, as the confusion and upset over its expanding relationship with Amazon shows. The dispute will likely repeat itself here at some point in the not too distant future, as more public libraries decide that it has suddenly become a part of their mission to become a middleman for an astute, enormous and aggressive corporation.
First, the United Kingdom’s national library decided last week to link its online integrated catalog exclusively to Amazon.co.uk.
The link takes patrons from the library’s catalog to the sales page on the Amazon site. A library spokesperson said the exclusivity was a result of a pre-built generic link coming with the Primo software supplied by ExLibris, which powers the catalog, the Bookseller reported. The library said it was providing an alternative method to obtain a book.
Explanations notwithstanding, other U.K. booksellers were predictably, and understandably, furious.
The Bookseller talked to Johnny de Falbe of John Sandoe bookshop who let forth a cogent protest: “The British Library says it is ‘providing users with the choice of an alternative method of obtaining a title if, for some reason, it is not available in the Library’s Reading Rooms.’ But users have always had an alternative method: it is called going to a bookshop. Are the British Library’s directors unaware that Britain has a great many very good bookshops? If so, they should discover them and learn what booksellers do besides simply taking money for products. If not, do they think everyone else attaches so little value to a diversity of bookshops and booksellers?”
De Falbe said, according to the Bookseller, that the library was ignoring the whole UK book trade in favor of Amazon.
“I had always fondly supposed that the British Library, of all people/institutions, would support British bookshops. Although the British Library has many private donors, it is primarily supported by public funds. Amazon is not a public information service: it is an aggressively competitive retailer. In effect, the taxes paid by UK booksellers are being used for the promotion of a single competitor, whose interests are in direct conflict.”
I really would like to hear how the library answers Mr. De Falbe. How is it is in his interest to lend his allegiance to a public institution that takes the money he pays in taxes and uses it, in part, to promote the business of his most voracious and lethal competitor? Under the circumstances, can the library really maintain that it is a disinterested public institution?
James Daunt, the managing director of Waterstone’s, a bookstore chain which also owns the London bookseller Hatchards, said in the same article: “It’s disappointing to say the least that a very British institution is driving readers away from local libraries and high street bookshops. In an environment where high street booksellers and libraries face huge pressures, it is a shame that the British Library choose to give their endorsement to one aggressively commercial organization.”
The library administrators then blinked. They removed the link (which shows it can be done). But then they put it back on Tuesday (October 18) “because of its usefulness for library users seeking further information about collection items,” such as book jacket images and content pages.
Again, predictably, this has led to a renewed protest. Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, a trade group, asked Dame Lynne Brindley, the library’s chief executive officer, on Wednesday, to review the Amazon arrangement, the Bookseller reported.
“We believe very strongly that the British Library should be opening channels for all book retailers to benefit from the opportunities offered by the British Library and I have written to Dame Lynne to request that she reviews the relationship with Amazon within that context as a matter of urgency,” Godfray said.
The Booksellers Association reported on October 4 that it had 1,483 independent bookseller members in June 2006, with the number falling by 26 percent to 1,099 by June 2011, the Guardian reported.
When will the librarian community better appreciate that just because Amazon is inexorable and seemingly ubiquitous that it is not always a resource worth promoting or a partner worth having? Productive and ethical partnerships with Amazon are not impossible, such as the British Library’s program to make 65,000 out-of-print 19th century titles available on Amazon via CreateSpace’s print on-demand service and as free downloads for Kindle owners.
But sometimes it is incumbent on librarians to say no, and to stand for something more than convenience and a devouring commerce.
Kindle Library Lending: A Triumph of Practicality Over Principles
The lending of library ebooks through the Amazon Kindle will likely expose the growing hollowness of some core principles of librarianship.
Here are two extracts from September 22 draft documents that the ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy E-book Task Force has begun circulating about ebooks:
ALA policies apply fully to e-books, including those that promote values such as intellectual freedom, commitment to access, respect for confidentiality and privacy, freedom of information, service for the public good, and ethics and professionalism. (From Ebook Principles for the Library Community)
[Library lending] (p)romotes privacy and free expression rights for individuals, as librarians would insist on them in the provision of e-book services. (From Talking Points on Library Lending of Ebooks)
Little of this applied in the Kindle deal, particularly regarding privacy and confidentiality. There was no significant effort by librarians or by ALA to insist on the promotion of privacy, which is a core principle of librarianship, according to ALA. If this major ebook program with a commercial behemoth involving 11,000 public and school libraries could be implemented without assurances of privacy, then how solid is the principle? Is reader privacy worth fighting for or isn’t it?
Throughout the Kindle rollout, librarians were in the dark, powerless. The most sought after piece of information since the initial Kindle announcement in April has been the purely practical consideration of how the checkout process would work, not whether Amazon would share and safeguard the longstanding and invaluable ethical concerns of librarians when it comes to the anonymity of reading.
The joy among front-line librarians about Kindle lending is more than understandable. They now can give thousands of unhappy patrons a resounding ‘yes’ when it comes to their Kindles. But their influence over the privacy policy of Amazon is nil. And it will likely remain at zero, even as Amazon becomes more deeply enmeshed in library operations and as librarians actively enable that role.
Unfortunately for libraries, this means abandoning principles about record retention that are spelled out in ALA’s policy manual (section 52.4.4), including the discomfiting ideas, in light of the Kindle deal, that libraries “assure that vendor agreements guarantee library control of all data and records” and that libraries “dispose of library usage records containing personally identifiable information unless they are needed for the efficient and lawful operation of the library.”
How do these principles reconcile with a patron having to sign into their Amazon account — which contains name, address, credit card information — before they can finish checking out a book to their Kindle? How do these principles reconcile with a partnership with a company that has amassed its wealth and power in large part through data aggregation and data mining?
OverDrive at least has gone on record to say that it does not retain any personal information about a patron. Amazon says nothing beyond what is posted on its website, whether pertinent or not. But that is what juggernauts do, they roll on without regard for the niceties of others, inexorably broadening their own footprint as Amazon did today with the introduction of the Amazon Fire and the cutting of Kindle prices.
Yet the decisions about a growing number of reading records, however detailed they may be, now rest with this juggernaut. Ceding control of any patron records is a long-term loss for libraries.
For example, Amazon does not promise to demand a warrant or even a court order if asked to turn over customers’ digital book records to the government. On its website, Amazon says it releases account and other personal information when it believes the release “is appropriate to comply with the law; enforce or apply our Conditions of Use and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of Amazon.com, our users, or others.”
If some day, for expedient reasons, Amazon disgorges information about library loans, to what degree will it harm a patron or the reputation of libraries? As a profession, can librarians say they have effectively dealt with this question? Can any librarian even say with confidence what Amazon’s record retention policy is?
The only real hope is that the numerous state privacy laws, with their regard for the library context, will be updated. The model for this is the California law passed in July, which updated circulation of records laws in order to keep confidential electronic as well as written patron use information and borrowing records. The information cannot be disclosed by a public library or a third party that stores information for the library, according to a summary by the California Library Association (CLA).
In the case of United States v. Rumely in 1953, Justice Douglas warned that unless the purchasers (or borrowers) of publications remain anonymous the “subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox” would lay hold and “fear of criticism [would go] with every person into the bookstall.” Douglas’s opinion remains highly relevant and reminds us why librarians in the past have zealously defended the privacy of reading and why it should always be, not a second thought, but a paramount, practical concern.
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WSJ: Amazon To Roll Out Netflix-like Ebook Lending Service?
According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday sourcing “people familiar with the matter,” Amazon, maker of the Kindle ereader, is currently in talks with publishers about a potential Netflix-like model for ebooks. Via the model subscribers could access a “digital-book library” of ebooks as part of a $79 annual Amazon Prime membership.
According to unnamed sources for the article, Amazon is planning to create an accessible catalog of “older titles” for the program, with a limit on the number of ebooks that members would be able to read each month using the service. Publishers are being offered a “substantial fee” to take part, according to sources, but whether any have signed on so far remains “unclear.”
On LJ’s Facebook page, readers have reacted to the news.
“This is disturbing. So many publishers have been so narrow minded the last few years,” wrote Jessica Moyer.
“I am a big user of our downloadable audio and ebooks through our library,” wrote Heather Gibson Turiello. “It’s a free resource today. Why would I pay to access library books?”
As LJ reported in April, Amazon is planning to unveil ebook library lending functionality for the Kindle later this year to integrate with pre-existing OverDrive ebook library catalogs. The Kindle is currently the only major dedicated ereader without library lending capability.
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Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader Adds Complexity to a Quickly Shifting Market
The same day that Apple and five of the Big Six publishers were sued for allegedly conspiring to fix ebook prices, Amazon unveiled further ebook news. Yesterday, it launched its Kindle Cloud Reader, a browser-based application that allows users to buy and read Kindle ebooks on the cloud via a web browser. It also lets users download books for offline viewing.
The browser-based approach is a slight departure from device-specific apps that users are most familiar with. Formerly, iPad users that wanted to read their Kindle ebooks on the device had to use a Kindle app specific to the iPad. But due to recent Apple rule changes, Amazon could not sell ebooks directly through that app. That is, users could read their ebooks, but couldn’t buy more without leaving the app.
The Kindle Cloud Reader gets around the rule by bypassing Apple’s app ecosystem entirely. It does so by displaying ebooks in web browsers, which work across many different devices. Users can read and buy ebooks directly through their browser.
For now the Kindle Cloud Reader can run on any device with either a Chrome or Safari browser (including the iPad). Versions for other browsers, including Firefox and Internet Explorer, will be available “in the coming months,” according to Amazon’s announcement.
It’s an interesting development, and could expand the audience for Kindle ebooks—although it’s unknown how the Kindle Cloud Reader will interact with OverDrive’s forthcoming Kindle ebook library lending functionality, due later this year.
Using a browser to read ebooks, of course, is hardly a new idea. Indeed, last October—shortly after Amazon unveiled an early beta version of what would become the Kindle Cloud Reader—the Internet Archive hosted a conference called “Books in Browsers 2010: The Future of Reading on the Web,” which included demonstrations of several browser-based ereaders and applications.
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