Kansas Digital Library Plans to Terminate Contract With OverDrive, Argues Consortium Purchased Material + Primary Document

From a Library Journal Article by Michael Kelly,

The state librarian of Kansas, with the backing of state attorney general’s office, is planning to terminate the Kansas Digital Library Consortium’s contract with ebook vendor OverDrive and is asserting the bold argument that the consortium has purchased, not licensed, its ebook content from OverDrive and, therefore, has the right to transfer the content to a new service provider.

Jo Budler, the state librarian, said she is in negotiations with other platform providers, and that the state consortium will become a beta tester of 3M’s new Cloud Library eBook lending service, which will debut this week at the American Library Association’s annual conference in New Orleans. (3M announced today several other beta testers as well.).

Budler is asserting ownership of all the consortium’s content on OverDrive’s platform, which represents a $568,000 investment from December 2005 to June 2010, with one exception: the MaxAccess subscription it has with OverDrive for audiobooks. Budler refused to sign a renewal contract with OverDrive not only because it would have raised fees nearly 700 percent by 2014 but also would have rewritten the clause upon which Budler is basing her right to transfer content.

Jeff Chanay, the deputy attoney general for the civil litigation division, whose aid Budler enlisted, said it was his department’s position that the consortium owns the content and has the right to move it.

Read the Complete Article

See Also: Here’s a Copy of OverDrive/Kansas Digital Library Contract (via Scribd and LJ)

See Also: A Few Related Articles and Mentions

• From the State Library of Kansas Monthly Report (June 2011)

• From the Report:”We are requesting permission from the publishers of e-content under our current lease to transfer it to another platform; the response has been very encouraging to date.”
• The report mentions that the State of Kansas has talked with others about “lendable digital content” including 3M (the library is now beta testing they’re new service as mentioned in the recent LJ article).  They have also talked with the Internet Archive about their “In-Library Program” and with Auto-Graphics about developing a digital content platform using Auto-Graphics Agent.
• On April 28, 2011 State Librarian, Jo Budler held a webinar to discuss the OverDrive situation.

• The May, 2011 Monthly Report points out, “We continue to study and explore other options for lendable digital content. Turnkey (content + platform) systems, as well as independent platforms for which we could acquire content, are on the radar.”

• “Kansas State Librarian Goes Eyeball to Eyeball with OverDrive in Contract Talks” (LJ, April 6 ,2011)
• “Issues with OverDrive contract and Harper Collins decision”

• Comments from Jo Budler, State Librarian of Kansas, March 25, 2011

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, Publishing