NEWS FEATURE
Ebooks: a new call to action
Can new eBook research and advocacy tools from CILIP and KR21 kick start the necessary process of change?
ANGER over ebook pricing and licensing models should have peaked during COVID lockdowns when communities were forced online and librarians saw publishers increasing prices and licence restrictions on library ebooks.
Campaign group #ebookSOS was born during this period as was Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) a pan-European project working on information regulation. Their efforts pushed the issue into mainstream media, sector
leaders were alerted, even the Competition and Markets Au- thority looked interested, but the problem hasn’t gone away and no solution has materialised.
Unlocking Ebooks To address this CILIP was commissioned by Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) to deliver the Unlocking eBooks project (www.
cilip.org.uk/unlocking-ebooks). It has two parts, one is its “case for support’ which provides resources to help librarians write let- ters and provide evidence. The other is its literature review which provides the information underpinning these resources. It has also included a roundtable at the House of Lords and a webinar. Previously campaigners lobbied politicians directly. This project aims to mobilise professionals on the ground to write to MPs and the Education Committee, and Vice Chancellors and provide their own case studies. Some letters based on a template provided through the project have already resulted in positive responses from decision makers.
Nothing changed KR21, which is funded by Arcadia, commissioned CILIP to undertake the research. Ben White from KR21 said: “As books have moved from paper to digital – so from sold to rented – the issues for those wishing to access eBooks have exploded – and are continuing to do so. It’s not just high prices. Some publishers refuse to license libraries while titles pop in and out of packages making collection development challenging. The digital rights management (DRMs) used by publishers prevent inter-library loans, and the rights provided research- ers in copyright law are often impossible to exercise.” Caroline Ball cofounder of #ebookSOS and member of the project board for Unlocking Ebooks said: “We are still faced with the same situation – nothing has changed and, in some ways, particularly with the recent Clarivate announcement (see p.8) things have worsened. Books and eBooks have always received less attention than journals – we see a lot of outrage about the ‘big deals’ and the exploitation of academic labour, but I’d love to see academics and students directing some of that attention towards books.”
Action Ben said: “CILIP’s Unlocking eBook report does a great job at
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highlighting the various issues. We hope colleagues will use the template letters to write with their own examples to their MPs and the House of Commons Education Committee.” (The report includes a portal for providing case studies.) He added: “It is vital we capture evidence as a pre-cursor to raising the problems universities, school and public libraries face around eBooks” and highlighted two studies due out, one from Glasgow, another from Jagiellonian Universities, both looking at eBooks from a copyright and competition law angle.
Simple and personal “Part of the challenge is the sheer variety and complexity” Caroline said, “At least with a print book you buy it and then do what you want with it. With ebooks there are endless variables: How many people can access it? How many simultaneously? Does it have artificial scarcity or expiry built in? Is it a one-off or repeating payment? Can we buy it in perpetuity? Can we buy it individually or only as part of a bundle? If it’s part of a bundle...” and this list of variables that a librarian needs to consider doesn’t stop there. She said this saps librarian time and also makes explaining
the problem difficult: “This is an enormously complex subject to explain to non-librarians. Simple, attention-getting mes- sages are key – like our 90-second video (
https://tinyurl.com/ ebooksosvideo) – boiling the issues down to the most basic points: prices are outrageous; very little is available digitally; some publishers refuse to ‘sell’ to libraries; and that we can’t buy, we only rent access.” She added that “tying it to things that affect people person-
ally is important too – the lack of digital ownership affects everyone, none of us own anything we ‘buy’ digitally!”
Health One sector that affects people personally is health. Neena Shukla Morris, who sits on the project’s advisory board, is liaison librarian at University Hospitals Sussex. In her case study she describes a local decision at the trust where “a key medical reference book, essential for clinical decision-mak- ing was priced at £2,750 for a five-year eBook licence. This
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As books have moved from paper to digital – so from sold to rented – the issues for those wishing to access eBooks have exploded... – Ben White
Summer 2025
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