21st Lending Libraries: Books in a Cloud

Publishing is changing, and an article from Searcher 21st Lending Libraries: Books in a Cloud relates that the publishing industry is at a crossroads. "Consumer driven market forces are driving publishers to reduce capital in inventory and infrastructure and concentrate on content development (Herther, 14). Multipublisher ebook vendors, including Overdrive, MyiLibrary, ebray and Net-Library are the clear choice for many libraries to provide ebook content. Some of these use the 'ceiling' model for downloads, rather like Freegal with music downloads or subscription, like Overdrive. The ability to self publish is also a new reality of the publishing industry, where budding authors can totally sidestep the traditional methods and can use the internet and ebook format for their works. The challenge to publishers is shared with libraries, who need to stay current in the reality that people can satisfy their information needs via the internet. Libraries need to stay valuable to the organizations and people they serve.

Herther, N. (2011). 21st Century lending libraries: Books in a cloud. Searcher 19(7),12-13, 48-51.