One Year Later, HarperCollins Sticking to 26-Loan Cap, and Some Librarians Rethink Opposition

From an Article by Michael Kelley at Library Journal:

Librarians’ passionate advocacy of our titles is vital to our efforts  and we remain committed to keeping our ebooks available in the library channel,” said Josh Marwell, Harper’s president of sales.
Marwell said that the 26-loan cap remains a work in progress, but no other business model has emerged in the past year that makes more sense to the company.
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The Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County (MLC), which consists of nine independent community libraries in Missouri, has now changed its mind about the boycott it approved last year.
“A couple of months ago we started purchasing from them again,” said Tom Cooper, the consortium’s president and the director of the Webster Groves Public Library. “The reality on the ground is that it’s more generous than what we are getting from other publishers,” he said.
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The Alliance Digital Media Library consortium in Illinois is still not collecting HarperCollins ebooks for the consortium, but now individual members are breaking away from the boycott and licensing for their own patrons, according to Jane Easterly, who chairs the alliance’s collection development group

“Just this week, someone from the group emailed whether we want to revisit the boycott because so many aren’t willing to sell at all,” she said.

More Libraries Comment in the Complete Article
 

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