ALA’s EQUACC, Presidential Task Force on Equitable Access to Electronic Content has launched a website, available at http://www.equacc.ala.org/ They are offering a discussion forum, comprehensive list of resources arranged by theme, and an option for RSS feeds or a subscription via email. Check it out, stay informed, be vocal, support the cause!

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This panel discussion was moderated by Dick Kaser from Information Today.  Speakers included Ken Breen, EBSCO Publishing, Leslie Lees, ebrary, Bob Nardini, Ingram, and Mike Shontz, OverDrive. Each panelist had 5 minutes to discuss who they serve and business models they offer. Ken Breen, EBSCO Publishing Ken reflected back to 1997 – common themes from [...]

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Reprinted in full from an ALA email and press release: Dear Members, First and foremost, I want to thank you for your patience. I held back on a public statement on the recent decision by Harper Collins to restrict the lending of e-books until the Equitable Access to Electronic Information Task Force (EQUACC) met last [...]

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From the ALA Washington Office website:  Recent action from the publishing world in the e-book marketplace has re-ignited interest and sparked many questions from librarians, publishers, vendors, and readers. Two ALA member task forces – the presidential task force on Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) and the E-book Task Force – were recently created [...]

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Peter McCracken, librarian and founder of Serials Solutions, has a new hobby – ships.  His site, ShipIndex.org, helps people do research on hundreds of thousands of specific vessels. With over 1.5 million citations in it, the site tells you what books, journals, CD-ROMs, websites, databases, and other sources mention particular ships. It includes vessels mentioned [...]

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A must read post from the Librarian in Black blog, Future of Libraries 2010: The Consumer and Library E-book Markets, offers a summation from 3 speakers at this event held in San Francisco on September 21st.  They include Paul Sims, Ann Awakuni, and Henry Bankhead. A few clips from the post: Paul Sims, “He believes [...]

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The Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study from ALA’s Office for Research and Statistics just released their 2009-10 statistics.  Included in this report was  U.S. public libraries providing access to ebooks – which was 65.9% A sampling of the % of Libraries Providing E-Books In: Florida–86.9% Hawaii–100% Illinois–46% New York–71% Ohio–83% Oregon–70.8% Washington–48.6 Note: [...]

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RUSA (Reference & User Services Division of ALA) sponsored a panel discussion of the product development of electronic reference products.  It was organized by RUSA, with Joseph Yue of the University of California at the lead and moderated by  Kay Cassell from Rutgers SLIS.  The panel included Frank Menchaca from Gale/Cengage, Rolf Janke from SAGE [...]

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See parts one and two of this session for more information.  The session was described by one of the speakers as “speed dating for eBooks”- evaluating the relationships between libraries, publishers, vendors.  Best thing I heard all day. Group three – Becky Clark, Johns Hopkins, Alex Holzman, Temple UP, Rob Kairis and Kay Downey, OhioLINK

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For the introductory material on the session, please see part one of this blog post. Second group – Lenny Allen, OUP, Erin Igoe, Cambridge UP, Tony Horava, OCUL, Joy Kirchner, COPPUL Lenny – budget and workflow are concerns, always looking a year in advance. Erin – CBO general ebook platform focused on perpetual access of [...]

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