eBooks: Canadian Urban Libraries Council Provides Summary of Recent IFLA Meeting About Digital Content

New on the Canadian Urban Libraries Council (CULC/CUBC) web site is a summary of the “Access to Digital Content” meeting that took place in The Hague on November 26-27, 2012.
The summary was written by Christina deCastell, a member of the CULC/CBUC eBook Task Force. She is also Director, Resources & Technology, Vancouver Public Library and also maintains the Uncovering eBooks blog.
She writes:

The purpose of this meeting was to increase IFLA’s understanding of the issues facing libraries and contribute to shaping IFLA’s direction on digital content. Participants included representatives of library organizations from many countries and key thinkers from the publishing community.

Topics covered at the event and in the summary include:

• Equity of Access
• Privacy
• Stewardship
• and a Discussion of Characteristics of Access Models for Digital Content

Read the Complete Summary
The summary also includes a mention and link to an excellent blog post about the event that Peter Brantley, Deputy Director of the Internet Archive, wrote for Publisher’s Weekly.

As IFLA works to prepare and release its findings, however, attendees at the meeting came away with a sense that time may be running out for libraries. The general consensus among participants was that public libraries have two, maybe three years to establish their relevance in the digital realm, or risk fading from the central place they have long occupied in the world’s literary culture.

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Libraries, News, Public Libraries, Publishing