A New Online Tool From Fight For the Future Looks at “Inequities in the Digital Publishing Revolution”

From Fight For the Future:

Fight for the Future has built a new tool to highlight the inequities in the digital publishing revolution. Public libraries, public schools, independent booksellers, as well as disabled, rural, and low income readers are being cut out of the US’s digital future.

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Fight for the Future’s new tool highlights how predatory digital book distribution is increasing digital inequity while harming core institutions like public libraries, public schools, and independent booksellers.

WhoCanGetYourBook.com offers letter grades in accessibility and availability for books, laying bare prohibitive licensing costs, exclusive deals such as Amazon’s Audible Originals, and usability concerns that are keeping popular books out of the hands of our nation’s most-vulnerable readers.

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“Libraries are facing a threat to their very existence due to unscrupulous business practices and legal challenges to the right to lend,” said Jennie Rose Halperin (she/her) Executive Director at Library Futures. “As libraries provide increased digital services to their users, it is crucial that they maintain continual access and safeguard an accessible, equitable, open future for everyone, no matter their background. The problems are manifest, but we believe that librarians and the public can fight back through collective action and a better awareness of the issues surrounding digital enclosures.”

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Filed under: Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries, Publishing