New ALA report explores challenges of equitable access to digital content

Source: American Libraries Magazine

ALA recently released a new report examining critical issues underlying equitable access to digital content through our nation’s libraries. In the report, titled “E-content: The Digital Dialogue,” authors explore an unprecedented and splintered landscape in which several major publishers refuse to sell e-books to libraries; proprietary platforms fragment our cultural record; and reader privacy is endangered.

The report, published as a supplement to American Libraries magazine, identifies a number of ways libraries and publishers can collaborate to lessen the digital content divide. Some of the topics covered:

•  ALA´s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group cochairs, Sari Feldman and Robert Wolven,summarize recent ebook activities and suggest directions for the future.
• Deborah Caldwell-Stone from the Office for Intellectual Freedom focuses on ebook privacy and related ethical issues.
• James LaRue offers perspectives from a reader, librarian, publisher, writer, and bookseller on ebooks today and tomorrow.

  You can read the report in the easy-to-use Zmag web browser format, or download it as a PDF for offline reading. Click on this link to read and download the report: “E-content: The Digital Dialogue”