Empty shelves at the Loughborough University Library.
in democratic and cultural life. In a research library, it will sometimes mean licensing (and licensing again and again) unstable bundled collections of titles to access the subset of titles needed. Again they are often very costly – with ten times the price of the paper equivalent not being uncommon. This deepening of the monograph crisis not only hampers re- search and innovation but poses a threat to the freedom of scientific research. In libraries with a preservation func- tion, it means that collections risk being frozen in time, unable to safeguard the contemporary licensed historical record. This goes against the cultural rights of communities to be remembered, as well as the needs of future researchers trying to understand the past.
What these scenarios have in common is that they all represent an undermin- ing not just of fundamental core library functions, but also the explicit mandates and rights given by governments to our institutions. By overriding them, they hamstring libraries’ ability to contribute to the functioning of a healthy and vibrant democratic society.
Same old problem 2
Abandoning copyright law, publishers enjoy unprecedented power to segment markets. Libraries are unable to meaning- fully negotiate given the overriding need to fulfil their obligations to users, host institutions, and the law. It means in con-
June-July 2026
tractual negotiations one party – libraries – must buy what a sole monopoly supplier has for sale.
The publisher is in control of the whole information ecology. A publisher can simply refuse to sell a book or article to a library it is more profitable to sell directly to consumers, students etc. with the resources to buy their own copies. Or they can impose a price many times higher than that available to individuals, or only allow access if it is part of a much wider package full of books and journals that the library and their users don’t need. They can remove the rights of access we have in the analogue world through technological protection measures (TPMs) that prevent a library from preserving or lending ebooks – for example through inter-library loan. They can prevent walk- in users not affiliated to that institution from accessing the work – so ironically, in the digital world even people willing to travel to access the digital resource may be barred from doing so.
These issues – and many more – may appear to bring short-term gains to pub- lishers, but it is not a recipe for a sustain- able long-term knowledge environment. It is hard to imagine a similar shift in other parts of the publishing market, leaving us simply with a poorer, more forgetful, less inclusive world. In a knowledge economy, the effect this has on research and inno- vation and on institutions including the NHS, demands some sort of resolution.
Protecting libraries to protect users An under-explored angle when looking for a solution to this is to apply the logic of consumer protection and competition. Unlike individual consumers, libraries and their parent institutions, universi- ties, schools and research institutions, amongst others, don’t enjoy any meaning- ful protection against unfair contractual terms imposed by others.
We propose steps that would extend consumer-type protections to libraries (and educational and research organisa- tions), on behalf of their users, to prevent complete refusals to license, as well as un- fair terms (including unlimited liabilities), and over-use of technological protection measures.
We are in a world where, from the perspective of our patrons – consumers – their right to information is what is under attack, when libraries feel constrained to sign away their patrons’ privileges enshrined in law to publishers. While libraries find themselves in a similar position to a consumer – faced with contracts that they have little if any chance of amending – they do not benefit from any sort of protection against unfair contract terms. While businesses in the UK are partially protected by the Unfair Contracts Act 1977, importantly this body of legislation excludes contracts relating to intellectual property and therefore offers no relief to libraries and their users. The biggest irony of all is that, if our
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