Recently Released Full Text Report: “E-books and Libraries: An Economic Perspective”

In this paper, we provide an economic analysis of the current environment in which libraries acquire electronic books (e-books) and offer some thoughts about the future. However, we must emphasize that, because the use of e-books is evolving so rapidly, our predictions must be treated as subject to considerable uncertainty. Moreover, it should be noted that factors such as social equity, community welfare, and intellectual freedom are necessarily outside the scope of the paper.